


Break of Day

by feistymuffin



Category: JackSepticEye (YouTube RPF), Markiplier (YouTube RPF), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Dragons, Friends to Lovers, M/M, NaNoWriMo, Sexual Content, Shameless HTTYD AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 18:04:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12776475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feistymuffin/pseuds/feistymuffin
Summary: Jack is the chief's son in a village of dragonslayers but he has no intention of killing a dragon—ever. When a dragon finds him and his best friend Mark in the woods it begins a chapter of his life that he never saw coming, even in his wildest dreams.





	Break of Day

**Author's Note:**

> Just like it says in the tags, this is a shameless How To Train Your Dragon AU. I was possessed by the idea for about a day before I sat down and wrote almost all of it within 48 hours, and then eventually completed it within the next three days. This is my submission for NaNoWriMo as well. My initial goal was 30k and I got close enough that I'm pleased with the outcome. Enjoy!

“D’you ever think about the future?” Mark asks him, a hunk of softwood in his left hand and a small knife in his right. He smoothly slices off a chunk and it falls to the ground, some ten feet below them.

“Like what?” Jack replies. He watches the wood pieces from Mark’s whittling drift down to the snowy ground like arboreal rainfall. 

Mark chuckles, elbowing Jack in the knee. Jack returns the favour by shoving his booted foot into Mark’s thigh, and only when the brunet wields his knife a little lower does Jack pull his foot back. “Like, will we always be on this icicle of a rock for the rest of our lives? Will we always be this?” He makes an encompassing gesture to the village, just in view from their perch in the pine tree, down in the valley. “Will we always be here, just as we are?”

“I hate to tell you, but you can’t rid yourself of me now,” Jack laughs, and Mark elbows him again, smiling. “I guess… that’s up to us, isn’t it? How we live out the lives we have.” Being son of the chief has way more downsides than upsides, because while not endowed with Mark’s skills or prowess, Jack is expected to know how to fight and kill dragons, just like the rest of his kin. In fact, he’s supposed to be one of the best at it because his father, Vallor, is. They have to know how to slay dragons in Norne, their village. It’s just the way things are, with the dragons being such a large threat. He presses his toes against Mark’s thigh again and when his friend looks up from his whittling Jack adds, “Where’s that comin’ from, anyway? Your life is set. You’re the village’s newest, best dragonslayer. You passed your rite like a cakewalk.” 

Mark’s grin is sheepish and he ducks his head against Jack’s delighted foot prods. “‘Best’ is stretching it a little, don’t you think?” he muses.

“Nah,” Jack says, grinning. “Pa said it himself. You finished with the best time in over fifty years, and you had the biggest dragon in the bullpens to fight.”

Mark’s face flushes red and he shoves Jack so hard he nearly topples out of the tree. He squawks and clings onto the branch for dear life, clawing his way back up while Mark laughs heartily. “This is what I get for praisin’ you?” he huffs, smirking. “Remind me to be on solid ground next time.”

“Don’t think that’ll save you, McLoughlin,” Mark rebukes, shoving him again. This time Jack’s prepared for it, though, and he moves with the motion and unbalances Mark enough that he wobbles precariously on the tree limb. “Besides, you’re the tree climber, not me. I’m at a disadvantage up here.”

“You’ve got a bloody knife in your hand,” Jack points out, and they both look at the implement in his grip. “Who’s at a disadvantage, me or you?”

“You,” Mark growls, falsely jabbing it towards Jack, who laughs and pushes his wrist away. Mark sits up straight and continues whittling and Jack pulls out his journal and charcoal pencil, flipping to a blank page and sketching out a design for a leather helmet. 

“Boys!” hollers a voice below them not five minutes later, and both of them crane their necks to see down at the base of the tree. It’s Mark’s mother, Cari, with a lit lantern in her hands, illuminating her in the growing dusk. “Come on, lads, it’s about time for the feast!”

“Coming!” Mark waves back, and she nods and starts the descent back to the village. Mark sighs, side-eyeing Jack as they both pack their things away. “Here goes nothing.”

“It’s just a little feast,” Jack soothes, patting his shoulder before they both clamber their way down to the ground. Mark leaps the last six feet and lands nimbly on his toes, but Jack has learned from imitating his best friend, and merely climbs the last few feet until he hits terra firma. “With the whole village.”

“Thank you for that,” Mark says snidely, swatting at him. Jack darts away with a cackle and Mark chases him down the winding path along the side of the valley. Jack keeps the lead but just barely, cutting across narrow strips of forest where the path doubles back alongside itself with Mark hot on his heels. At one point they pass Cari, who smiles at the two of them, and Jack manages to stay ahead until the very end but as they come up on the village gate and Jack slows, Mark chooses that moment to tackle him around the middle and cast them both into the dirt.

“Get offa me, you oaf!” Jack growls, but it’s without heat and he still laughs when Mark shoves his palm onto Jack’s face as he gets to his feet. His best friend holds out that same hand to help him up, and Jack takes it and jumps to his feet. 

They’re still brushing dust off their clothes when they come into the grand hall, rows of tables and benches already cluttered with their fellow villagers, family and friends. Cari comes in behind them and the three of them make their way to the table nearest the head table where the chief and his family sits. Jack, with a big thumbs up to Mark, leaves the two of them at their table and goes up to the head table, taking a seat on his father’s lefthand side.

The noise in the hall quiets down almost at once as Jack’s father, Vallor, gets to his feet. He gives his son a short look that makes Jack gulp, and then addresses the hall in a booming voice, “Friends! Welcome, welcome! Tonight we boast the accomplishments of Mark, Norne’s newest dragonslayer! May we all drink to his name!”

Short but adequate, the speech is all the villagers need to find their celebratory instincts. Cheers ring out all across the hall and Jack sees Mark’s family around him, giving hugs and offering mugs of ale in equal measure. Mark’s grin is a mile wide, and Jack is already getting to his feet to join them when beside him his father says quietly, with authority, “Jack.”

He pauses, glancing back to his father. “Yeah, Pa?”

“Where were you today?”

“Out with Mark,” Jack says, like he always does, because if he’s not at home or at the smithy then he’s undeniably out with his best friend. 

“Tonight, have your fun,” Vallor says, his broad chest rising and falling with a sigh. “Tomorrow, we talk.”

“About what?” Jack asks. He feels the dread in his bones like blades, severing his hope of a carefree evening.

But Vallor shakes his head and waves a hand towards Mark, who’s apparently drowning in ale. “Have your night of fun. Tomorrow.” With that he gets to his feet and walks to the other end of the hall where the village council sits at a single table. He takes a seat and instantly the councillors and Vallor are deep in conversation.

_What’s going on?_ Jack wonders worriedly, fear and trepidation gripping him tight. He meets Mark’s eyes and he sees the moment when his friend notices the emotions roiling through him, but he puts on a brave face and smiles, weaving his way through the crowd to him.

“What’s happened?” Mark asks him at once over the raucous noise of the party. Somewhere in the hall Jasper and Felda have started playing their fiddle and flute in a plucky, upbeat tune, and it casts an odd veil over the dreading mood Jack finds himself in. 

But tonight is Mark’s night, and Jack isn’t about to ruin it. “Later,” he says, instead of answering. 

Mark looks like he wants to argue but he lets it go. “Later,” he agrees, and hands Jack a mug of ale with a wide grin. 

*

The morning light is fresh but meddlesome, bringing with it hangovers in abundance. Jack groans, holding his aching head as he rolls out of bed and immediately making his way to the wash basin in the corner of his room. He splashes water on his face and drinks the whole glass of water at his bedside before changing into some warm clothes and slinging his bag over his shoulder. 

His father is awake and standing at the hearth when Jack comes downstairs, and he stops dead. Vallor looks up and by the expression on his face Jack knows he’s not going to like what he says next.

“It’s time, Jack,” he says.

“Time for what?” Jack says with a swallow, but he has a suspicious sinking feeling that he already knows what. 

“It’s time to stop dilly-dallying,” Vallor says brusquely, “and take your place among your people. It’s time for you to be a dragonslayer, Jack.”

The words stop him cold, even though he expected them. As his heart rabbits in his chest Jack gets out, “Pa, I really don’t think I can—”

“You can,” Vallor says, unimpressed. “You can, son. It’s what you were meant to do. The dragons aren’t going anywhere, and someone needs to perpetuate the cycle. As future chief you have responsibilities, and part of that responsibility is being able to lead by example.”

“It would be a poor example to lead by,” Jack tries, a shred of humour, but his father gives him a heavy look and his smile disappears. “Pa, I’m serious—”

“So am I, Jack,” his father says. He turns to pick something up and when he turns back he brandishes a war axe, one-handed for someone of average size, a mere flyswatter for someone Vallor’s size, but when he proffers the weapon to his son Jack needs both hands on it to keep from dropping it. “This axe was mine when I was a boy. I had Herke polish it up and sharpen it for you. It’s yours now. Use it well.”

“Pa, I really don’t think—” Jack tries again. 

“Enough,” Vallor snaps, and Jack’s mouth fuses shut. “I spoke with Mark’s parents. He’s going to be your trainer, since you spend all of your time with him anyway.” Something odd passes over his features, something mystifying and worrisome, but then it’s gone again in a flash. “You might do well to consider finding someone of a more female persuasion to spend time with, instead. Both of you.”

The implication of that statement runs through Jack like boiling water, frying up his insides and warming his face. “It’s not like that, Pa,” Jack says. He does his best to keep the longing out of his voice but when Vallor’s face twitches with disdain, maybe even disgust, he doesn’t think he was successful. 

“Work hard, son,” Vallor says, and with a final look he leaves the house.

Jack doesn’t bother taking the axe. Instead he stashes it in his room under his bed and then sprints to his and Mark’s meeting spot, a large boulder at the top of the north side of the valley, near the forest edge. Mark is already there when he comes upon it and by the distant, resigned look on Mark’s face Jack knows that his parents spoke with him about his new role in Jack’s life. 

“This is malarkey,” Mark says at once, before Jack can even catch his breath. “This is ridiculous, actually, that they expect you to just… become the sort of person they need you to be just because they want it. It’s madness!”

“It’s what it is,” Jack sighs, eyeing Mark as he paces angrily. “The dragons are too dangerous to him. No matter what I say, Pa is pushin’ this.” He shakes his head and puts a hand on Mark’s arm to stop him. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Mark’s shoulders sag and he gives Jack a despondent look before leading the way into the forest. “Alright. For today, you’ll just watch me. Observe what I do, watch how I react. That kind of thing.” He scowls. “See if we can prove to your bullheaded father that you can’t be changed just because he wants it.”

“Good luck with that,” Jack laughs. “He’s not exactly the understandin’ sort.”

Ahead of him Mark pauses on the game trail, paved more by wildlife than by humans, and turns to fix him with a steely look. “I mean it, Jack. It’ll be Hell on Earth before I let him tell you what you are. What you’re meant to be.”

The words and their sincerity spark something familiar and nervous in his stomach, rising up into his chest. With caution Jack comes to Mark and flattens his palm on his chest, his pulse hammering a maddening pace at his throat. It’s never been discussed, what they are to one another, but Mark has never left him behind even when others encouraged it, even when it would’ve been better for himself to cut off the dead weight that everyone saw in young Jack. Since Jack can remember it’s been him and Mark against the world and to this day Jack can’t fathom why, all those years ago, Mark chose to protect him from everyone who would have demeaned him if not for Mark’s interference.

He hears what the villagers say, what the women titter and the men whisper to one another. Mark is eligible for a good position in the village, for a good woman and a good life, and Jack is the single biggest thing holding him back from that good life. Every day the eagerness of Mark’s parents can be seen, that maybe today would be the one that Mark finds a nice girl to settle down with, instead of cavorting around with Jack on a daily basis.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that Jack is the scrawniest dragonslayer ever born in Norne. He’s the chief’s son and as such there’s a lot expected of him, more than anyone else in the village—expectations that suffocate him in his dreams, shoes that need to be filled with something more than Jack can give. It goes beyond his physicality, beyond even his skills, such as they are. It’s what Jack is as a person that has the village, specifically his father, out of sorts. No future chief should be what he is, uncertain about dragonslaying and useless at it to boot. The villagers must gnash their teeth at the thought of someone like Jack being chief, when so many others are so much more willing and qualified.

Most of the villagers are built more like Mark, thicker and stockier, taller. Though Mark is somewhere in between the two, he took to dragonslaying like a bird to flight when they began training at a younger age. Since then he’s made his way through life at a run, excelling at slaying like no one before him, and he’s brought Jack along with him at every turn. Jack’s not wrong to think there might be something here between them, is he? 

For a moment Mark seems shocked at the action, and then he lets out a slow sigh and covers Jack’s hand with his. He presses Jack’s palm into his chest for a breathlessly perfect moment, then lets his hand drop. “Come on, those dragons won’t hunt themselves.”

The morning is spent tracking dragons, keeping their eyes peeled for deep grooves in the dirt that signifies a dragon taking off, noting downed trees and the direction they’ve fallen. Mark shows him what dragon tracks look like when they find a set in the snow, small ones and big ones together, probably a mother and her fledglings. 

Above them the sun is blinding, not a cloud in the sky as they pause for a respite. Jack chews halfheartedly on bread and dried meat, idly listening as Mark recounts tracking a peculiar shaped print in the snow the other day.

“It’s odd, it seemed almost… delicate,” the slayer murmurs, chewing. “The toes were narrower than any I’ve found before but it was still a huge animal. They weren’t like any other print I’ve s—” Abruptly he cuts off, head tilted, and in the following silence there’s a soft noise of rushing air overhead. A shadow flickers past in the same moment and his head snaps up, eyes narrowed as he looks skyward. 

“What is it?” Jack asks quietly, nervous at Mark’s sudden stillness. 

“Dragon,” Mark murmurs back, repacking his bag without looking down. Jack follows suit, stuffing his things away, and he tiptoes to Mark’s side. 

There’s nothing in sight above them but the presence of something else is undeniable. “What kind?” Jack wonders.

“I don’t know,” Mark whispers, confused. He edges towards the western side of the small clearing they chose for lunch, eyes up. “It’s as quiet as a Night Fury but it’s broad daylight. We’d see it for sure.”

“A Night Fury?” Jack parrots, following. “The black ones with lightning breath?” 

“That would be them, yes,” Mark whispers back. “But this isn’t one of those. I have no idea what this is.”

Jack swallows the tightness in his throat. “Does that happen often?” he asks, even though he knows the answer. 

In front of him Mark comes to a slow stop, glancing over his shoulder at him. “Never,” he replies softly.

A sudden gust of wind crashes over them and Jack is knocked off his feet sideways. His eyes are drawn up at movement as an enormous shadow flies overhead, winged and cerulean blue. It’s gone in a fraction of a moment and if Jack didn’t already suspect a dragon was nearby thanks to Mark, he’d think the sky had simply rippled. 

“Jack!” Mark hollers nearby, and then footsteps rush up on him and his friend is helping him to his feet as the trees around them shudder from the gale. “Jack, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he replies, eyes wide and searching the sky. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” Mark frowns, brushing off his clothes, a steadying hand at Jack’s shoulder.

“The—the dragon!” Jack exclaims. He points up to where the tree boughs part to let the sky through. “It was right there!”

“You saw it?” Mark demands, his full attention now on his friend. “What did it look like?”

“Blue,” Jack says, helplessly glancing around as a not-so-far-off roar is heard to the north. Mark freezes too, then turns and faces the sound. “It was the exact blue of the sky. If I didn’t know to look for it I’d never have seen it.”

“A dragon the colour of the sky,” Mark hums pensively. They both jump when an unexpected second cry coasts through the forest, much closer than before. His face transforms, brow stern and eyes keen as they rove the sky. “It’s close. Climb a tree, Jack.”

“But—” Jack begins, and Mark sighs.

“Don’t fight me on this, Jack,” he says, and points emphatically to a spruce tree. “You’re safest where it can’t see you.” Mark’s face loses some tension and his eyes become pleading. “Please. I need you safe.”

Something loose and fluttery breaks free inside Jack’s chest and he nods wordlessly, cheeks flushing. If he opens his mouth he’ll probably just embarrass himself, so he turns and quickly ascends the large spruce, gloved hands gripping onto handholds surely until he’s fifteen feet up. “Is this high enough?”

“Yeah, that’s good,” Mark calls. The air is still, too still to be anything but a prelude to something worse, and Jack watches as Mark slowly pivots in a circle, his eyes everywhere. 

A gargantuan gust of wind thrashes the trees around them and Jack hangs on for dear life when the spruce sways dangerously. He wedges himself between two branches and puts his back to the trunk, eyes shutting firmly until the wind dies and the tree becomes motionless again. His eyes open and the forest below is void of people, causing panic to work its way through Jack’s limbs like lead in his veins. 

“Mark?” he yells, hands cupped around his mouth. Only silence meets him, not even the chirp of a bird or the bubbling of a creek. “Mark!”

Something giant crashes through the trees to the north side of Jack’s tree and he whirls to face it, clambering up onto the next branch to get a better view through the spruce’s needles. The dragon is unlike any other, including everything he’s seen in the Dragon Manual, their guide for all things dragon. It’s huge, at least thirty feet long and pale yellow, and its body is slender, elongated and delicate. Frills, feathers and tendrils decorate its head along with a slim, short pair of ivory horns. Jack holds in a gasp when he sees feathers lining its wings in addition to scales, both in hues of pale yellow, blue and pink. Instead of spines along its back it appears to have some kind of plumage, short feathers striking the path of its spine all the way to its tail’s tip. On its underside he can see just the beginnings of cerulean, all along its neck and belly and even the bottom of its tail. As it unfurls its wings and spreads them wide Jack sees that the blue extends even further to the underside of them, completing the illusion of a fragment of sky. 

His friend bursts through the underbrush seconds before the dragon’s wings buffet the area with another gust of wind. Mark is sent to his knees and even as he scrambles for his bolas in the pouch at his hip Jack knows it’ll be far too late to do him any good. 

The dragon approaches Mark where he lay struggling, wings furling to its sides. The dragon’s slender snout creeps low to sniff at him, its orange eyes wide with what Jack really hopes is curiosity, but Mark is still having problems with his gear and Jack isn’t about to wait to see what the dragon does to his best friend. 

Without a shred of self-preservation he unsheathes the dagger in his boot and jumps from the tree, right onto the back of the dragon. His fingers find and hang onto the dragon’s wing as it shrieks at the attack and whips its head around on its long neck to fix burning orange eyes on him. Jack freezes where he is, eyes wide and fear smothering his ability to breathe, and for a long, breathless minute all the dragon does is stare at him. Belatedly he sees that he nicked its hide with the blade—one of its wings has been damaged and guilt swarms over him in waves. He drops the dagger from his shaking hand, and it clatters off the dragon’s scales and into the dirt below. 

“Jack!” Mark yells, and the dragon’s plumage perks as it turns to face him where he lay on the ground again. “Jack, what the hell are you doing?! Get out of here!”

Jack opens his mouth to reply when he feels the beast tensing beneath him, wings lifting high. Without warning its wings shove down, the dragon leaping up at the same time, and then Jack is airborne and clinging for dear life to the dragon’s neck as it gains height with each wing thrust. 

“ _Jack!_ ” Mark screams desperately from somewhere below. 

But Jack doesn’t dare move, doesn’t dare breathe as he’s carried off. His eyes squeeze shut and he feels the wingbeats of the dragon like steady clockwork, but something is wrong. Along with its wings Jack can feel its breaths too, laboured and drawn out, and each movement seems to be a challenge. 

_I damaged its wing,_ Jack recalls, and fresh shame washes over him. But he can’t do anything about it now. He can only hang on and let this animal take him wherever it’s going.

The wind buffets him up here like he’s inside a storm, and being in proximity to a dragon’s wings likely doesn’t help. It’s mere minutes before the dragon is descending again, wings stuttering as the injured one struggles to keep up, and while Jack is thankful for the reprieve from the wind he’s not sure their landing is going to be a smooth one. Jack clings, arms wrapping tightly around its slender neck as he looks around it. He only gets a glimpse of a lake’s surface before they’re crashing into it, huge sprays of water cascading over them. 

At once Jack lets go, breaches the surface and swims for his life, aiming for the nearest bank. His worried, frantic glances over his shoulder show him that the dragon is content to ignore him, licking its wounded wing as he paddles away. He makes it to the shore and, even though his breath is dangerously fast, he still breaks into a run. But he quickly discovers that there’s nowhere to run. In front of him is a grand wall of stone, unyieldingly smoothed by erosion, and as he turns to look along its edges the rock continues around either side of the lake and beyond.

“The ravine,” Jack whispers, horrified, soaked and cold. “I’m stuck in the ravine. With a dragon.”

The noise, subtle as it was, attracts the dragon’s attention from where it lay floating in the lake. Jack freezes, pressing himself back against the rock as the dragon approaches, swimming without haste to the shore where it then shakes the moisture from its scales and feathers like a dog shaking its coat. Its wings flap before settling along its sides again, one of them much more gingerly than the other, and Jack can’t contain his small noise of dismay when it comes right to him. 

Bright orange eyes sparkling with life regard him as astutely as a mother, and Jack feels as though every secret he harbours is bared to this creature. He shuts his eyes and inhales reflexively when it sniffs towards him, its long neck stretching, but there’s no harsh pain from a bite or razor sharp claws tearing into his skin. He squints an eye open and the dragon is right there, staring back. Its pupils are blown wide and Jack can’t help but make the comparison of a house cat with a new toy. Or a cornered mouse. 

“N—nice dragon,” he gets out in a squeak, and its head slowly tilts. “I’m… Listen, I bet you know this because you’re… a dragon and all, but I’m the least appetizing thing on this island, I assure you. I’m all skin and bone, no meat on me. Ask my pa,” he says, nervous laughter accompanying the words.

Unsurprisingly the dragon doesn’t go and ask his father about his tastiness, but when its head lowers and Jack flinches, it flinches too, rearing back briefly before shuffling closer. 

“That—uh—” he rambles, and he’s not proud of the noise he makes when its snout touches his chest. It snuffles against his coat and then pulls back, giving him an oddly curious look before settling back on its haunches, tail thwapping against the damp ground as it sits. 

Jack doesn’t move, doesn’t even breathe. In a traitorous act his legs refuse to hold him up any longer and slowly he sinks down until he sits on the sand underfoot. Thready breaths escape him each time the dragon moves, and he sits waiting for his demise that never comes. 

The dragon lies on its belly, claws digging easily into the wet sand, and with a couple of pleased wiggles it settles down. It regards him with that endlessly curious look, eyes bright and wide, and tenderly it nudges its nose into his arm, jostling him.

Jack shrieks softly, hugging his arms to his chest. “Don’t do that,” he says, voice shaking, even though he’s at least ninety percent sure that the dragon can’t understand him. “Gods above, how would you like it if I—I just swooped you up and took you somewhere, then started pokin’ you? Huh?”

Its head tilts curiously and it nudges into him again, this time nosing at his side. Jack lets out an involuntary, hysterical giggle and swats it away before he can think better of it, and his hand slaps lightly into its snout. The dragon snorts and pulls back, looking at him for a second before shoving its nose right under his armpit.

“Agh!” he shrieks, shoving at its face, but the dragon is unrelenting. Its head pushes into him until its feathers are fluttering at his mouth and he has to splutter to get words out past them. “What the—Stop it! Odin’s beard, what is the matter with you?”

Again the dragon offers no response, only noses at his chest like he smells incredibly appetizing, but still it doesn’t bite him. Jack holds in another shriek when it nips at his coat with slender, wicked ivory teeth, tugging him forward a few inches before letting go.

“I—I don’t know what it is you’re doin’, but you’re absolutely confoundin’,” Jack tells it firmly, as firm as he can manage while a dragon toys with him. He pats his chest down to make sure he’s still in one piece, and as he does he feels something under his palm. Surprised, he digs into his coat’s interior pocket and brings out a piece of dried fish, which the dragon instantly snaps from his fingers, swallowing whole. Jack squeaks and hurriedly inches back again and the dragon follows, sniffing copiously at his coat and bag. 

“You—you want food?” he asks it dubiously, and the dragon blinks expectantly. Jack glances between his bag and the dragon before pulling the bag into his lap and digging inside for the remainder of his lunch, half a loaf of bread and two pieces of dried mutton. He holds out one of the meat pieces and again the dragon snaps it up, somehow mindful of his fingers. Its tail waves back and forth now, the spaded and feathered tip twitching, and it wiggles its shoulders as if limbering up to stalk some sort of prey. 

“Uh, okay,” he says with a swallow, and tosses the second piece of meat into the air. The dragon’s neck extends and it snatches the meat from the air expertly, its pale pink tongue licking along its lips before eyeing him again. “Don’t look at me like that, I don’t have anymore. You just ate it all.”

Seemingly satisfied the dragon backs up but its eyes don’t leave him for even a second. It just watches him, every minute movement he makes followed by those orange eyes, and Jack watches it back. It’s completely unaggressive, and remembering back, even in the forest with Mark it hadn’t attacked them. It just… approached them, as if looking for something. 

“You smelled our food, didn’t you?” Jack asks it, and the dragon meets his gaze. “You smelled our food and came lookin’. But not for us.”

With a short snuffle the dragon nudges him again, this time much gentler than before. It eases its nose under his arm where it lies in his lap, and Jack lifts his arms well out of its way. But it doesn’t do anything, just rests its chin down on his legs and shuts its eyes.

“Um,” Jack hedges, and he feels the dragon stir slightly. “Do—Is this like, a dragon pettin’ zoo all of a sudden?”

The dragon’s mighty body huffs out a sigh, and Jack watches as smoke plumes from its nostrils. It still doesn’t move, and hesitantly Jack lets his hands rest on its head between its horns. At once the dragon makes a noise, a rumbling hum that Jack feels through his whole body like a vibration, and when he lifts his hands off again in surprise the noise stops. 

“You’re not like anythin’ I’ve ever seen before,” Jack whispers, and he rests his hands on the dragon’s warm snout and forehead, its tendrils tickling his arms. The rumbling buzz starts again, and Jack can’t help the small laugh that creeps out of him. 

“You remind me of this story I heard once, from the village storyteller,” Jack muses. The dragon snorts, maybe a sign that it’s listening or just a motion signifying that it can also make sounds. “He told us about fairies, and pixies and such. He said they’re the prettiest thing out there, sparkling and beautiful. He said that they grant wishes—you know how children want to have a puppy or somethin’. Personally I’d wish for somethin’ like a ladder, at the moment. Maybe wings of my own.”

The dragon snorts again and this time Jack knows it understood, knows that it can clearly understand everything he’s said. He lets his head thunk against the rock wall behind him, and his eyes find the wound on the dragon’s wing. It’s still bleeding, although not very much, and guilt grips him tightly. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, “about your wing. I didn’t want to do it but I thought you were attackin’ my friend. You remember him? Mark? The guy in the forest with me.”

The dragon lifts its head and Jack quickly removes his hands as it turns to face him. Its orange eyes, so catastrophically bright, so incredibly complex and dazzling, hold an age of wisdom in them, but also the curiosity of youth. 

“I bet he’s missin’ me,” Jack continues, chewing his bottom lip. “I bet he’s worried sick.”

Humming briefly the dragon gets to its feet, shaking dirt and sand from its slender body. Jack tentatively follows suit and stands and the dragon looks at him before turning its back and unfolding its wings. Its long neck swivels around to face him, then it glances at its back and then him again.

Jack feels his face lose all of its blood. “You want me to ride you? I—Is that a good idea with your wing hurt?” he asks it worriedly. 

Huffily the dragon snorts, even stamping one of its delicate but powerful feet. 

“Okay, okay,” Jack grumbles, and with care he approaches it and climbs upon its back, mindful of its injury. “Don’t overexert yourself, though. Just get us out of the ravine.”

The dragon gives him a dull look before leaping into the air, wings buffeting the ground as it labours to gain height. Once, twice, again and again its wings beat and Jack can see the strain the dragon is under. Clinging as he is, the only thing he can think to do is smooth his hand along its neck, pressing his forehead to the scales there. Through the rush of the wind Jack can hear it start to hum, and as soon as they breach the rim of the ravine he hollers, “That’s high enough! Head for the forest!”

Instantly the dragon veers towards the east, gliding now rather than flapping. The forest rushes below them, spruce and fir and pine all reaching high into the sky, but still not high enough to touch them as they soar past. Quickly they come upon the clearing that Jack and Mark had lunch in and with some difficulty the dragon lowers them down, wingbeats unsteady. 

Once its feel hit the dirt Jack is throwing himself from its back, looking around hurriedly as he steadies his footing. “Mark!” he calls, hands cupped to his mouth, but there’s no answer. “Mark!” He turns in a circle, yelling for his friend with growing desperation. 

Suddenly the dragon beside him lets out a bugle, high and piercing, and Jack flinches and claps his hands over his ears. When the sound tapers off the dragon looks at him, evidently very pleased with itself. 

“Uh, thanks,” he mutters. “Listen, not that I don’t—appreciate the company, but… What’re you still doin’ here? Didn’t you just want food?”

The dragon huffs and flops down onto its rear, apparently prepared to stay where it is. Jack’s brows lift in surprise and the dragon bugles again much softer than before, and the frills on its head change colour in rapid succession, blue and green and pink and blue once more before settling again on yellow.

“Wow,” Jack breathes, watching the display. “That’s incredible!” 

The dragon makes a noise, soft and yearning, and lowers its head to eye level. Orange sparkles capture his attention, seizing him where he stands, and the dragon inches forward until its nose touches Jack’s. 

Something passes between them and Jack jumps back at the same moment the dragon does, both of them eyeing one another speculatively. “What was that?” Jack asks, breathless with awe, and the dragon just stares at him. “Did you feel it?” he whispers. Slowly the dragon dips its chin down and fixes him with a narrowed look, an indisputable confirmation. 

“Jack!” hollers a familiar voice, and Jack jumps again, jarred from the strange trance. 

“Mark! I’m here!” Jack yells back, and helpfully the dragon bugles again. 

Not moments later Mark stampedes through the underbrush, bow strung and an arrow nocked, but he screeches to a halt when he sees Jack standing amiably next to the dragon that, not an hour before, had carried him off. 

“Jack, what in the world…” Mark says weakly, and his bow lowers as his arms falter. 

“It’s okay, I’m okay,” Jack says quickly, hurrying to him. He throws his arms around Mark’s neck and he hears the clatter of his bow hitting the ground before Mark’s arms crush him in a hug. “God, am I glad to see you.”

“That’s my line,” Mark says roughly, the words muffled with his face tucked in Jack’s shoulder. He pulls back, though, hands staying at Jack’s waist and warming him head to toe, his eyes warily flitting between his friend and the dragon. “What the hell happened? You’re all wet, what—Why is—It took you away, how did—”

“It helped me,” Jack murmurs, glancing back at the dragon, sitting patiently and watching them. “We crashed into the lake in the ravine, because I stabbed its wing when I jumped on it. It… communicated with me, sort of. It just wanted food.” He smiles ruefully, and the dragon’s plumage perks. “It’s injured— _I_ injured it—and it still helped me.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Mark whispers, awed, and now he’s looking at the dragon head-on. “Nothing at all like this. The dragon itself is… unique, and I’ve only heard of its kind. But this behaviour is unprecedented. A docile dragon.” He laughs shortly, more shock than amusement. “I think we might be dreaming.”

Jack laughs too, resting his forehead on Mark’s shoulder briefly before stepping back. “So you’ve heard of it, then?”

“Sometimes traders tell stories in the dining hall, when the ale is flowing,” Mark says with some humour. “Once I heard a man tell stories about a dragon that was sort of like the Night Fury, but its polar opposite. A dragon of the day, with belly scales the colour of the sky and breath like the sun.” He expels a huge breath, face slack with befuddlement as he says, “They’re called Daybreakers.” 

“A Daybreaker,” Jack breathes, and something tickles at his memory from nights spent studying dragon lore by candlelight in his bedroom. “I thought they were extinct?”

“I guess not,” Mark chuckles, with an expansive gesture at their scaly friend. “This one is female, too, so she might be able to have fledglings and continue her species.”

“It’s a female?” Jack wonders, eyeing the dragon where it sits, idly nibbling its teeth against an itch on its tail. He rubs his hands over his arms, staying the growing chill that’s consuming his body. “How can you tell?”

The slayer searches for words, lips moued briefly. “Her features are very… feminine,” Mark says. “I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s… it’s in the shape of their face and the way they carry themselves. She has protective instincts, too, and typically the only ones to raise young are females. I’ve never seen a dragon employ protective instincts on a human, though. That’s very new.”

Jack sighs breathily and murmurs with a shiver, “So what do we do? I don’t think she wants to leave me alone. For whatever reason.”

“Regardless, we’ve got to go home eventually,” Mark reminds him. “You’re too wet to be out here in the cold for so long. And, you can’t play house with a wild dragon. You wouldn’t get past the front gate.”

With a frown Jack turns to the dragon. “Okay, this is me askin’ nicely for you to please leave me alone so I can go home.”

At once the dragon snorts unhappily, smoke bursting from her nose and hot air gushing over them. Jack coughs and waves smoke from his face as Mark wheezes beside him. “I think that’s a no,” he mutters, sighing again. “What am I supposed to do? I can’t bring her back with me. She’d be attacked on sight.”

Mark studies the dragon for a long moment, the dragon staring unerringly back at him, and after a minute he says to her, “I know you can understand me, so I’m asking you to please listen. Jack and I need to go home.” When she rears her head back, eyes wide with indignation, Mark paves on with his hands lifted placatingly, “But we will come back. Tomorrow. We have to come into the forest often for the next little while, and we can come see you then. Is that okay?”

Her lips curl slightly, baring thin, pearly teeth and for a nervously tense moment Jack thinks the dragon’s going to snap one of Mark’s hands off at the wrist, but then her whole demeanour droops. She lets out a soft noise—hopefully one of assent—and gives Jack a soulful look, plumage flat against her scales. 

“I promise I’ll be back,” Jack says, reaching out a shaking hand. Immediately she leans her head forward and presses her nose to his palm, rumbling contentedly. Behind him Jack hears Mark’s sharp noise of shock and he adds, “Mark will be with me. He’s my best friend, so you ought to like him too.”

With a huff the dragon eyes Mark over his shoulder, her disdain clear as day, but she snorts amiably enough so Jack takes it as compliance. “Stay out of sight, alright? We’ll be back tomorrow.” He backs up when Mark grabs his arm and starts to tug him along, but eventually he has to turn around or risk being tripped up by the forest’s debris. He glances over his shoulder periodically with Mark’s warm hand at his elbow and every time he sees the dragon, getting smaller with each step, his heart beats inside his chest like a drum. 

*

Jack sets the mug down at Mark’s elbow, careful not to jostle it near the manual spread before him on the table. “Find anythin’?”

Blindly Mark grabs the mug and takes a hearty sip, setting it back down with a sigh and slapping his hand against the nearly blank page. “Nothing. Daybreakers are apparently as elusive as Night Furies, or they’ve been keeping well away from humanity of any kind.”

“So where’d this one come from so suddenly?” Jack wonders quietly, taking a seat beside him on the bench with a wary glance around the dining hall. Aside from themselves, Irstell, an aging woman that can hold her liquor better than any man in the village, and a few teenagers probably avoiding their parents, the hall is empty. “She didn’t just spring up out of the ground.” 

“You’re right, she didn’t,” Mark agrees. He leans and snags Jack’s bag from the table top, fishing inside it for his journal and charcoal pencil. He flips it open to a fresh page and scrawls ‘DAYBREAKER’ across the top. “But now that she’s here, and apparently hellbent on befriending you, we need to deal with it. The more we know about her, the better we can understand her. I’ve been hunting dragons as long as I can remember,” Mark says, and the mild pride that used to be in his voice is long gone, replaced with something like loathing, “and I know a lot about them and their behaviour. We can study her and take notes.” 

Mark shakes his head, tiredly rubbing a hand at his eyes. “Our whole lives we’ve been taught that dragons are slaughtering, mindless beasts, and even knowing all I know about them I still believed it against all the evidence I found. Daily I’ve been reminded of their intelligence and sense of being, but I still killed them.” Wearily Mark sighs, eyeing Jack with a sardonic smile. “It took a miracle for me to see their potential as fellow creatures, and not just game to be hunted or an adversary to be destroyed.”

Jack puts a hand on Mark’s forearm where it lay on the table. “We all believed that,” he says soothingly. “It’s not your fault.”

“You never believed that dragons were just vermin,” Mark says with a wry half-smile. “You knew better, even before all this. It’s why you can’t kill them. They’re as real to you as the villagers, every last one of them.” 

“An unpopular trait, I’ll remind you,” Jack laughs, feeling accomplished when Mark’s smile becomes genuine. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.” He hesitates before adding uncertainly, “I’m really proud of you, Mark, for doin’ the right thing when you saw her. No one else would’ve stopped long enough to listen to me.”

“You come first,” Mark replies at once, then his face flushes with colour. Jack goes still and opens his mouth to say something but no sound comes out, and he knows he’s as red as his friend. Mark reaches out a tentative hand across the table, pencil forgotten and fingertips brushing against the back of Jack’s hand. “You always come first.”

“Oh,” Jack whispers, suddenly swaddled by nerves. Mark’s fingers grip his soundly, and Jack squeezes back instantly. “I—I guess I kind of knew that.”

“Good,” Mark murmurs, glancing around and confirming their seclusion before quickly ducking to press a brief kiss to Jack’s brow. Jack tries to hold in a helplessly embarrassed but incredibly pleased sound, but it squeaks out of him and Mark’s soft smile transforms into a grin. “My timing is terrible, but I’m sure we can continue this another time.”

“Okay,” Jack says quietly, smiling like a fool when Mark squeezes his hand once more before drawing away to pick up the pencil again. “So,” he says, clearing his throat and trying to rid his face of its beatific smile without success, “what’re we goin’ to do about Pa? About the others? If this becomes a regular thing I can’t be constantly disappearin’ to the forest. Eventually someone is goin’ to notice I’m barely here, doubly so if you usually come with me.”

“For now we have the excuse of your dragonslayer training,” Mark sighs, “but eventually your father and the villagers will want to see the fruits of that labour, and I don’t know how close that day is.”

“We might do somethin’ to try and warm everyone up to the idea,” Jack suggests. “If this dragon has an affiliation to me, maybe it’s somethin’ other dragons can see. Maybe I can show the village that they won’t harm us if we don’t harm them.”

“Slow your roll,” Mark says gently, gripping his shoulder. “Let’s worry about the one dragon for now, and when we get our feet under us we’ll see about searching for others to tame. One step at a time.” Mark’s face darkens for an instant before his expression clears. “This isn’t the sort of thing you want to make mistakes with.”

With melancholy Jack remembers the recent additions to the village cemetery, a man by the name of Jorst and a woman, Beril, both killed in a previous expedition to locate the dragons’ island. “Right. Yeah.”

As if he can guess his dark thoughts, Mark’s hand becomes soothing, his thumb stroking along Jack’s neck. “We’ll be okay, Jack. This dragon is a fool for you.” He pauses, looking away for a moment before turning back to him and murmuring, “As am I.”

Jack’s breath seizes in his chest, Mark’s thumb a maddening presence on his skin, and he gets out a tenuous, “You’ve got to stop sayin’ things like that before I have a conniption.”

When Mark laughs it’s delighted, easy in its levity. “You realize that’ll just encourage me, I hope.”

“Unfortunately,” Jack says, his tone droll, and Mark rests his head against Jack’s shoulder as his laughter climbs. 

*

“How’d it go yesterday?” Vallor asks him on his way out the door the next morning, and Jack restricts his sigh before it escapes. 

“Um, great,” Jack says uneasily, turning to face his father. “I’m really, uh… learnin’ things.”

“Mark is the best dragonslayer we have,” he seems keen to remind him, as if Jack hadn’t grown up with the man. “He’ll teach you everything there is to know about hunting down the beasts. Did you catch any?”

Jack swallows nervously. “Uh, nope,” he says. “Mark couldn’t find anythin’. But he showed me trackin’ and… stuff.”

“Odd,” Vallor says with confusion, “I was sure I heard something in the forest, several times.” He shrugs the thought away and claps him on the shoulder so hard that Jack staggers. “Well, happy hunting, son. Get out there.”

“Right, uh—bye, Pa,” Jack squawks, and bolts from the house. 

Mark is already at their meeting place at the top of the valley path, whittling the same piece of wood from two days ago. He looks up at the sound of Jack’s footsteps crunching through the snow and smiles, hopping down from the boulder and pocketing his hobby. “Hey, beautiful.”

Jack missteps and stumbles, face reddening as Mark laughs gleefully. “Please, Mark, spare me from this blatant flirtin’.”

“Sure,” Mark says easily, too easily, and Jack squints at him with suspicion. Mark’s grin is easygoing, too, doubling Jack’s unease. He’s proven right when he reaches Mark’s side and the man swoops down and pecks his mouth with a quick kiss. Jack splutters and flails at him, swatting Mark’s shoulder as the brunet nearly bursts with laughter. 

“Mark!” Jack says accusingly, but he giggles when Mark crowds him against the boulder, his hands planting against the frozen rock by Jack’s ears. Mark keeps him there and his giggling fades, those brown eyes becoming serene with depth as he looks at Jack. “Mark,” he says again, nearly a whisper, and his lungs pause when Mark bends. 

Their kiss is slow, a single breath mingled with the crisp morning air between them. Jack’s face tilts up when the slayer’s lips brush his with delicacy and one of his hands comes down to cup Jack’s jaw, directing him gently. Mouths moving together, Mark leads him somewhere warm despite the cold around them and Jack follows eagerly, first one and then both arms winding around his neck to keep them close. 

Mark groans into his mouth and they break apart, but neither of them moves very far. All along his body Mark is pressed, pushing him into the solid rock at his back, keeping him there with his amorous weight. Jack would feel trapped if it was anyone else, as if he could do this with anyone else. With an unsteady breath Jack moves back in, a tender press of his lips to Mark’s that lights him up like an oiled wick. When Mark makes another sound, small but deep, Jack feels it through his body in a delicious, rumbling wave. 

“I really was planning on just the one kiss,” Mark murmurs to his mouth, then moves aside to his cheek where he plants several more kisses. “I’d like that to be said before my body runs away on me.”

“Noted,” Jack says breathlessly, then pulls him back for another kiss. This time Mark is insistent, his hand at Jack’s jaw gripping firmly as he coaxes his mouth to open. Jack obeys, unable to do anything else, and Mark’s lips mould to his as his tongue seeks entry. Jack constricts his arms and sighs unevenly, Mark’s groan on his tongue, and then a strong arm is snaking behind his back and he can feel everything that isn’t said between them pressing against his thigh.

The contact spooks him and he draws back suddenly, panting. He worries at once what Mark thinks but his friend is only amused, and lets him go when Jack eases away. “Just in case you were unsure about my feelings,” Mark offers cheekily. 

Jack laughs squeakily, cheeks flushed from more than just the cold, and Mark’s smile softens. He comes forward and when Jack doesn’t resist he cups his face with both hands, bending and kissing his lips tenderly before drawing back. 

“Come on,” Mark says, thumb brushing Jack’s cheekbone. His hands lower and Jack misses them at once, misses his mouth like the best craving, but he doesn’t dispute when Mark adds, “Let’s go find this dragon of yours.”

The clearing from the previous day is only an hour’s walk from the village but to Jack it’s an eon. Between Mark’s new role in his life and the Daybreaker’s sudden addition his world has been turned on its head, and the newness of it all has him reeling. Still, Mark at his side is like a blessing, something he’s had all his life and now needs in so many surprising and novel ways, and the dragon only compounds his sense of appreciation. 

They start to hear her before they crest the hill that leads towards the clearing. Once she’s in sight and the dragon sees them she traipses over to them, weaving through the trees expertly, happily bugling for all she’s worth. 

The sight of her feeds something in Jack that he hadn’t even known was starving, and he’s reaching out automatically. Her head dips and she presses her nose to his palm and that same shimmer of feeling courses through him, making him shiver. He watches the dragon’s scales shift, watches her feathers ruffle and he knows she felt the same thing. 

“Hey,” he greets, and she makes a soft noise in her throat in reply. She glances over at Mark, orange eyes wide, but apparently she finds his presence acceptable and turns her attention back on Jack. “How was your night?” 

Her shoulders roll as she sits pertly, what Jack takes as a casual shrug. “Same,” he offers, and she bumps her nose into his side, snuffling. 

“Her sense of smell is really good,” Mark observes, coming forward slowly as the dragon nudges Jack insistently, jostling him. 

“Alright, okay!” Jack chuckles, pushing her nose away far enough for him to proffer the dried strips of meat in his coat. “But this time you’re sharin’.” He gives her what he hopes is a stern look but she barely reacts, eagerness oozing from her. He tosses a piece up for her overhead and she snaps it up, jaw working as she swallows, and eyes the remaining meat in his hands.

Jack stuffs a piece in his mouth, chewing emphatically and throwing up another meat strip. She catches that too, making a show of copying him and chewing the morsel before swallowing and sitting impatiently again. 

“No offense,” Jack says, smiling, “but I feel as if I’m trainin’ a hound.”

The dragon snorts in defiance, tail slamming down into the snow with a considerable _thwump_. Jack raises his hands innocently. “What? I love dogs!” She snorts again, harder this time, and Jack tosses her a piece of meat which she begrudgingly catches and eats. “I know you’re not a dog, relax. You’d never let me put a collar on you.”

She snuffles, nostrils working rapidly, and gives him the driest look he’s ever received from a non-human. Mark laughs, slugging Jack in the shoulder and murmuring, “She’s got spunk. I like her.”

“She needs a name,” Jack says, taking out his journal and handing it and his pencil to Mark, who flips to the proper page and starts scribbling immediately. “What in the hell does one name a dragon?”

“Is ‘Dragon’ too simple?” Mark muses, laughing when both Jack and the dragon look at him blandly. “I’m kidding, come on. Why don’t you ask her about a few names? See if she likes any.” He wanders in a slow circle around her, foot over foot as he no doubt takes in her minor physical details and jots them down in the journal. 

Pensively Jack sits in the snow, gazing up at the dragon where she sits, head on a swivel and curiously tracking Mark’s progress as he circles her. “Alright, um… Well, my mother’s name was Nirra?” The dragon turns to face him, unblinking and expressionless, and he scratches it off his mental list. “What about Karem?” No response. “Hilda? Uther? Olfina?” Nothing. 

They spend the next hour throwing names at the dragon, and each one gains no positive reinforcement. Jack flops back into the snow beside Mark where he sits, roughly sketching out the dragon’s body on a new page in the journal. “Valhalla above, I wish you would just pick one already.”

Suddenly the dragon yips, an odd, short noise of elation that has Jack and Mark both snapping to attention. “What?” Jack demands. “What is it?”

She noses at him insistently, shoving him hard enough that he topples back into the snow again. He shoves at her but she doesn’t let up, pushing and pushing until he’s on his back with her chin on his chest. 

“Uh, Mark?” Jack gets out in a wheeze, futilely trying to ease out from beneath her maw. “Anythin’ in your awesome dragon knowledge base to explain this?”

“She’s happy about something, that’s obvious,” Mark replies. He taps the pencil against his lip, lost in thought for a moment before he guesses, “Maybe you said something she liked for her name?”

“What, Valhalla?” he tries, but she doesn’t move an inch. “What else did I say?”

“‘I wish you would just pick one already’,” Mark quotes, and then the dragon’s head lifts and turns to him, orange eyes big and intent on the slayer. “What in that sentence is a name?”

“Wish?” Jack hedges, then wheezes when the dragon drops onto him again, humming happily. He shoves her off enough to breathe out, “I can’t call you ‘Wish’. That’s… not a name.”

“Maybe it’s not just ‘wish’,” Mark wonders. “She might see words differently than us in her head, even if she fully understands what’s being said.” He smiles brightly. “What about something like ‘I wish’ or ‘wish you’?”

The dragon lifts her head and crows, nearly howling her approval. Jack covers his ears and tries, “Wishyou?” She stamps her feet excitedly into the ground, practically beaming down at him where he lay. “That sounds a little odd, though. Clunky.”

“Play with the sounds,” Mark proposes. “Why not something like… Wishoo?” The dragon snuffles, head tilted, and crows softly. “Not quite right?”

“Wiishu?” Jack tries, then immediately gets crushed under her considerable weight. He grunts and scrabbles against her snout, shoving uselessly. “Okay, okay, I got it! Wiishu! You have a name! Now get off me, you big turkey!” 

Delightedly the dragon, Wiishu, draws back and sits with a proud sniff, rumbling with contentment. Her feathers are all puffed up and her frills are performing a small light show, running through a random cycle of constantly changing colours. 

“Remarkable,” Mark breathes, watching her. Jack is soon similarly hypnotized, and it’s moments before he catches himself staring while she preens. 

“I wonder if that’s like, a distraction display for when she hunts,” Jack says, gesturing to her dimming frills. “Hypnotize her prey and then snatch them while they’re disabled by the lights.”

“A very keen observation, my love,” Mark demurs, smiling as he writes it down in the journal. Jack feels his face heat and when he glances over Mark’s smile has evolved into a grin. “Don’t be so bashful, Jack. It’s only me and Wiishu here.”

The dragon bugles, wiggling eagerly as she looks at Mark, clearly pleased with his name calling. Mark laughs and adds, “See? She won’t tell anyone that I’m sweet on you.”

“Yes, I was really worried about that,” Jack says dryly, smiling when Mark laughs. He catches a glimpse of Wiishu’s wounded wing as she adjusts them and he approaches the dragon, hand outstretched. “Does it still hurt?”

She looks down at him, head lowering until she’s at his level. Softly crowing she adjusts her wings again, but even if she’s putting on a brave face Jack can still see the discomfort it causes her. “I wish I could help,” he murmurs, touching her snout with regretful fingers. 

“Actually, I might be able to,” Mark says abruptly, quickly glancing around at the forest floor. He makes a noise of success and tucks the journal and pencil away in his coat, then makes his way to a cluster of small, flat, round-leaved plants at the base of a tree. He snags a handful and yanks it from the frozen ground, plucking the tiny leaves from it and making a pile of them on the snow. 

“What are you doin’?” Jack asks him, coming over and crouching at his side. 

“This weed, nettle scale, is named after dragons,” Mark replies. “Remember, from Erda’s lessons when we were boys?” Jack nods, vaguely recalling his early lessons with the ancient herbalist. “It heals things like stomach aches when you eat it, and it takes away the pain and swelling of a wound when you make it into a salve. It’s hardy and grows all year round, and I’ve seen dragons eat it in droves. Odd for carnivores, right?” He looks up, his face beaming. “Unless there’s some kind of purpose for it.”

Curiously Wiishu snakes her head over to where they sit, and she squawks when she sees the contents of Mark’s pile. She dips her head to sniff at the leaves and goes to lick them up with the flat of her tongue but Mark scoops them up and shakes a finger at her. “These aren’t for eating.” When she makes a discontent noise at him and nudges his shoulder hard with her nose he insists, “Just wait, would you?”

“We don’t have the ingredients for a salve,” Jack says, and then understand when Mark puts a handful of the leaves in his mouth and chews. “But I’m sure that’ll work just fine.”

Mark winks at him, his mouth obnoxiously full of herbs, and Jack snorts with laughter. Mark chews the leaves down until they’re a mushy mess of green and spits them out into his palm, then he gets to his feet, motions to Wiishu and requests, “Let me see that wound, if you please.”

Obediently the dragon extends her wing out horizontally, a broad expanse of leathery skin fringed with scales and feathers galore. Near the top joint where bone connects to sinew, amidst the scattering of feathers is Jack’s inflicted stab wound where his dagger pierced through the skin, a gash about three inches wide. For an animal her size the wound is superficial, but no less aggravating since it rests on the joint of a limb integral for her lifestyle. Flying with a lightly damaged wing is probably not unlike walking with a sharp pebble in your boot. 

“Hold still, girl,” Mark says gently, then takes the handful of herbal paste and, using two fingers, smears some of it over the gash. Instantly she’s flinching away, her wing jerking beneath his hands and drawing away in a single swipe. She growls lowly at him, orange eyes fiery with temper and her pupils narrowed to nothing but slivers. 

“Hey, it’s alright,” Jack soothes, putting a hand at her neck. She glances at him and huffs irritably, keeping her wing tight to her side. “I know it hurts to touch, but this will help. I promise.”

With frustration she bugles at him but she extends her wing again, and this time when Mark puts some of the paste on her wound she flinches but doesn’t pull away. She does stare at both of the men balefully, though, until she’s allowed to withdraw her wing. She cranes her neck to sniff at the paste and licks it once, smacking her jaws as she tastes it and minutely adjusts her wing, testing it. Seemingly satisfied she eyes them again, croons softly and bumps her nose into Jack’s shoulder, and after a moment of hesitation she bumps Mark’s too.

“You’re welcome,” Mark says quietly, and when he puts a hand gingerly on her side she hums deep in her chest, a soft noise of boundless gratitude. 

*

The next day Jack and Mark are greeted by Wiishu a full half hour sooner than they should be. She surprises them by soaring above the treetops overhead, voicing her delight and buffeting the boughs with her wingbeats. They both pause to take in the sight of her, nearly invisible with her underbelly camouflage against the perfect blue of the morning sky. 

“I think she’s feeling better,” Mark muses, continuing on.

Wiishu shadows them all the way to the clearing, occasionally doing loops and barrel rolls overhead, showing off her aerial prowess now that she’s fully able. She twirls through the air, spiralling and free falling, breathing scintillating clouds of luminous white fire that blinds them like direct sunlight. As they walk Mark is furiously scribbling down notes, and he fills a page and a half before they come upon the clearing, Wiishu eagerly waiting for them back on solid ground. 

She dances on her front paws as Jack runs up to her, throwing his arms around her neck and breathing in her wild, comforting scent. Right away she’s humming, a vivacious rumbling that only amplifies when Mark comes up to her and puts a hand on her shoulder. 

“Missed you,” Jack tells her as he pulls back, and her mystical orange eyes return the sentiment, pupils wide and trusting. 

Once they get settled into a routine—Jack “conversing” with Wiishu while Mark sketches her and writes things down, inputting when he has something to add—it quickly becomes obvious that something has the dragon out of sorts, despite her good mood. 

The slayer makes a thoughtful noise as he approaches Wiishu, her dazzling eyes fixed on him. “Something’s up, isn’t it?” Mark murmurs, and her head tilts to one side. Jack comes up beside him and Mark says again, “Something’s up. She’s… off. Restless.”

Jack runs a hand down the scales on her neck, watching her gorgeous plumage flare gleefully at the attention. “Maybe she needs somethin’. What’s the list of necessities for a dragon?”

“Food, rest and socializing, for starters,” Mark responds easily. “And to a lesser extent, breeding. It goes without saying that they need to fly often, I suppose.” He shrugs, tucking the charcoal pencil behind his ear. “And I guess you could count exercise, too, though that falls under flight since that’s their mode of transportation, and it’s quite exerting.” 

Already Wiishu is stamping her forepaws into the ground, looking expectant and beyond excited as she glances between the two men. Jack gives his friend a laconic glance, musing, “Well, you said somethin’ right.”

Mark thinks for a moment and then hums brightly, a sound of realization. “It’s so obvious,” he laughs. He gestures to Wiishu and says with a grin, “She wants you to fly with her.”

The Daybreaker’s pale wings spread wide and she lets out a sharp bugle, a definitive “yes” if Jack ever heard one. But there’s one thing bothering him. “What about a saddle or somethin’? She’s got a lot of delicate spots.” He runs a hand over the feathers down her spine. “I don’t want to hurt her.”

“For now I don’t think she’ll mind losing a feather or two,” Mark chuckles, eyeing her as she practically dances in her excitement, and Jack has to agree with him there. “Just sit behind her neck and be mindful what you grab for a handle.” 

Mark gives him a boost up onto her back, squeezing his clammy hand once before letting go and stepping back as the dragon stretches her wings out. “Relax,” he says, smiling. “She’s got you. Trust her.”

With a preparatory swallow Jack nods and leans forward, wrapping his arms snugly around Wiishu’s neck. He shuts his eyes and presses his cheek to her warm scales, and after a deep breath he says, “Let’s go!”

His steed jumps, wings thrusting down in hurried, forceful tandem and the world rushes away from him, shrinking underfoot disorientingly fast. Immediately Jack shuts his eyes against the sudden vertigo and Mark’s retreating form disappears from view entirely. Wind rushes past his face, whipping his coat around his body and stirring up his hair haphazardly.

Only once he feels Wiishu level out and begin gliding does he open his eyes again, and the shriek he lets out is all fear. Below them the island of Norne is a fraction of the size, his takeoff point indistinguishable amidst the forest in its entirety and Jack lets out a shaky breath as he leans back, releasing his death grip on Wiishu’s neck. 

Beneath him she crows softly, her head swivelling around to peer at him with worry. He gives her a trembling smile and she croons again, lips curling back to bare her ivory fangs in what Jack supposes is a smile. The wind is harsh up this high and it steals Jack’s breath away as he opens his mouth to laugh.

It’s obvious that Wiishu is going easy on him for his first real flight with her, but Jack can feel the way her body tenses under him each time they catch an updraft, every time they veer to keep Norne in sight. He breathes steadily for a full minute, steeling himself for what he’s about to do, and then pats her neck and hollers over the wind, “Let’s go, Wiishu!”

The dragon roars, maw pointing up and splitting to spew sparkling sunbursts and Jack instinctively tightens his thighs around her shoulders, arms locking in a vice about her neck. As the light fades from her fire Wiishu tucks her wings and dives, twirling her body in a death spiral. They tumble through the air and the ocean’s waves rush up to meet them like someone switched the gravity back on, sudden and brash in their approach. Jack’s stomach drops into his boots and then flies up into his throat as he clings for dear life, and he lets out an elated, terrified scream moments before the Daybreaker’s wings fan out and catch on the air, bringing them into an abrupt horizontal glide over the sea spray. 

“Yeah!” Jack whoops, joyous and giddy as cold mist wafts over them, whitecaps breaking below with almighty crashes. Wiishu’s wings beat furiously as she climbs, her powerful body straining to ascend. With a breathless laugh he leans back and spreads his arms wide, hanging on only by the grip of his thighs. Bugling giddily the dragon flares her wings and banks in a tight circle, startling him and yanking a shriek of laughter from his lungs. She levels out again when they rise over the treetops and as they coast back towards where Mark waits Jack presses his forehead to the feathers on the back of her neck, feeling her responsive hum with a blissfulness unrivalled. 

Mark is exactly where they left him, sitting patiently on a fallen tree, journal propped open on his knee and pencil flying across the page. He looks up when Wiishu hovers over the clearing, lowering herself with light wingbeats until her paws touch down. She comes to a stop with a full body shiver and Mark helps a weak-kneed Jack down from his mount. 

Grinning madly Jack lets Mark guide him towards the fallen tree he’d been sitting on, easing him down onto it and then sitting beside him. His heart is racing, pulse pounding at his neck as he catches his breath, and it’s only made worse when Mark tangles their fingers together and kisses the back of his hand. 

“Had fun, did we?” Mark asks him, smiling. 

“Yeah,” Jack says breathily. His eyes roam over Mark’s face helplessly—his beautiful brown eyes that smile like stars, his broad chin and broader jaw rugged with beard growth, his mouth quirked in mirth. Releasing his fingers Mark leans forward the few inches necessary to bring their lips together, his hand instead curling around Jack’s neck and causing a new kind of breathlessness. 

Folding her wings along her back the dragon lets out a soft cry, nudging her nose repeatedly into Mark’s shoulder and breaking their kiss. When Mark looks up she gives him a wide-eyed look, rolling her shoulders excitedly. “Oh, no, you won’t get me to do that anytime soon,” the slayer tells her with a laugh, amiably shoving her snout away. 

Her next sound is all aggravation, and she huffs at them both before settling down into the snow with her back to them.

“I think you hurt her feelings,” Jack whispers, watching Wiishu’s frills twitch at his words. 

“She’ll get over it,” Mark chuckles, easing a hand over Jack’s ear and back into his flyaway hair, still mussed from his flight. “Now c’mere and kiss me. I went without your company for a whole twenty minutes. Completely unacceptable.”

Jack grins into their kiss, giggling as their teeth clack when neither of them can seem to stop smiling.

*

“We might need another journal,” Mark tells him three days later. He’s flipping through the pages as they walk back to the village, Wiishu reluctantly left somewhere behind them. “I’ve practically filled this whole thing with sketches.” 

“It’s hardly a waste,” Jack says, shrugging. “Wiishu is one of a kind. The more we have about her, the better.” 

“I’ve drawn the same things, multiple times,” Mark muses, licking his thumb to turn more pages. “I think I’m just looking for an excuse to draw her at this point. She’s… amazing.”

“Agreed,” Jack says quietly, glancing over his shoulder to the darkening forest. 

“Every day it gets harder for you,” Mark notes, equally quiet as he studies his friend, shutting the journal. “To leave her.”

“She’s part of me,” Jack whispers, wounded, and he leans into the touch when Mark puts a hand on the back of his neck. She’s part of him, yet every day like clockwork he deserts her, only leaving her with the meagre promise that he’ll return the next day. “Already, she’s…” 

“She’s yours,” Mark finishes for him gently. Jack’s expression crumples and Mark sighs, drawing him in for a hug. “It’s okay. We’ll figure this out, Jack.”

Jack presses his face into the worn fur trim of Mark’s coat, holding back tears. Six days. That’s all it took for him to find something vital that his life had been missing, something he didn’t even know that he’d been without until it was thrust under his nose. It goes without saying that Mark is important to him, that his father and the villagers and his role in their lives as future chief are all important, but it all pales in comparison to the relationship he’s developing with this incredible creature, a species he’d thought very little of up until a week ago. Mark is tangled up in it all, being present each time that Jack’s been with Wiishu except for that first afternoon, and now Jack can’t picture his life without either of them in it. He’s not even sure that he’ll be able to keep Mark, never mind Wiishu. 

The thought perishes the last vestige of positivity in him and he whimpers quietly, wrapping his arms around Mark’s middle. “Shh,” the slayer soothes him, hand rubbing across his back in wide arcs. “It’s alright. Everything is alright.” 

“Everythin’ is not alright,” Jack blubbers into his coat, fingers tightly gripping the leather. “I don’t know how they know, maybe they’re just guessin’, but every day when your parents see me they watch me with hard eyes and I know they’re judgin’ me for our relationship because they can’t judge their own son. My dad is gettin’ more and more suspicious when I come home without a shred of evidence that we’ve been huntin’ dragons, even though you’re the best there is, and there’s no reason for you not to have helped me kill one by now. And Wiishu keeps lookin’ at me like I’m killin’ her when we leave.” He sighs unsteadily and lifts his face to see Mark’s woeful features in the dying daylight. “How is everythin’ alright?”

“First of all,” Mark says, half stern and half tender, “don’t worry about my parents. They can’t make me marry some random girl anymore than your dad can make you do the same.” He lets out a slow breath, hands becoming caressing on Jack’s body. “As for your father, he’ll come around when we explain everything. Even he can’t argue that befriending the dragons is a better solution to the war than slaughtering them all to extinction. I’ll give testimony for their companionability, and as the village’s most skilled dragonslayer my word means a lot in that category.” He smiles, pressing a gentle kiss to Jack’s pouted lips. “Once everything else is dealt with Wiishu can hopefully come and go freely, and there won’t be a need for all of this secrecy.”

Jack sighs, leaning into Mark’s chest as the brunet brings him close, lips pressed to his brow. “Your faith reaches farther than mine,” he murmurs morosely.

“I have enough faith for the both of us,” Mark replies, smiling. They stay like that, Mark’s palms a kingly comfort on his body, until Jack can inhale without his breath hitching. Mark draws back, giving Jack a slow appraisal before he lets him go. “We’d better hurry home. The sun’s almost set.”

The pair makes their way down the valley path and past the gate, parting at the village centre with longing looks from both sides. Before they turn away Jack gives a little wave and Mark winks back, and all the way home Jack holds onto his feeble share of Mark’s everlasting hope, the hope that things will work out for the better even in the face of all their unlikely odds. 

Vallor is waiting for him when he enters the house, his back to the door as he faces the lit hearth. Jack slowly shuts the door behind him and inches into the room on featherlight feet, asking hesitantly, “Pa?”

“Where were you?” his father demands without turning, his tone the most unkind Jack’s heard in weeks. Jack opens his mouth, nerves clambering through him, but Vallor carries on, “Don’t you dare say you were training. Don’t you dare lie to my face.”

“I was with Mark,” Jack says, because it’s not a lie, but it’s also not what his father wants to hear. 

Vallor turns to face his son, and Jack’s complexion whitens as he sees his father’s old war axe in his big hands. “What,” he says, dangerously low, “is this doing under your bed, if you’ve been training so diligently?” 

“I—” Jack begins, but Vallor throws the axe to the floor with a heavy clatter and he flinches hard, his mouth sewing itself shut. 

“Where are your kills?” Vallor roars. “Where are the hides, and the talons, and the remains of these dragons that Mark _must_ be helping you bring down?” With growing dismay Jack realizes, too late, that he’s been caught. His father knows he’s been disobeying him from the very beginning, although apparently—hopefully—not to the fullest extent of his disobedience. Not about Wiishu. “What else could you _possibly_ be doing,” Vallor fumes, breaths heaving as his temper riles, “but _exactly_ what I told you to do?!” When Jack doesn’t reply, eyes cast down and hands wringing themselves into a frenzy, the chief growls, “Get out of my sight.”

His heart bloody, Jack turns to walk upstairs but his father slams his fist onto the solid oak mantle and barks, “Leave this house.”

Jack freezes at the foot of the stairs, and shock doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface of the mutilation that grows inside his chest at the command. Like a cascade of icy water through him he feels a deep-seated cold settle in his bones, dread in its purest form. Loss at its most powerful. 

He has nothing left to lose, no more battles to fight if his father casts him out, so when Jack turns back around he takes his sudden numbness in stride and says, “The dragons aren’t our enemy.” Vallor is unflinching, his bearded face a hard mask. He’s heard this spiel before from his son, but Jack continues, “I know they’re not, because one of them loves me—and I love her.” 

For an uncertain moment Jack thinks his father might strike out at him, but the instance of blind rage filters out of Vallor’s expression as quickly as it came. “And I _know_ that with time,” Jack says firmly, passion seeping into his voice with each passing word, “I can make every dragon understand us, that I can make every villager understand them. I know we can forget the differences that separate us and we can create a new future for our people alongside these amazin’ creatures.” Jack presses his lips together, forcing his emotions back as his father’s stoicism peaks. Cold, hard eyes regard him across the living room, a chasm of unchangeable traits and beliefs separating them. “I know all this because I’ve seen it. Mark has—”

“Mark,” Vallor spits, face scrunching with distaste and fury. “How could I forget? Of course your boyfriend is mixed up in this.” Jack pales but holds his ground when Vallor lifts his burning eyes to his son. “So you’ve corrupted my best slayer with this talk of befriending dragons. Is that supposed to move me, compel me to see your side?” He snorts derisively. “If anything it only confirms my worst expectations. I should’ve known better than to put you two together on purpose.”

“Pa, just listen to me,” Jack pleads, edging near desperate now as he watches his father recede with each breath. “The dragons, Mark, all of it—it’s not what you think. I lov—”

“You love him,” Vallor says nastily, his tone edged with iron barbs that puncture Jack’s weary soul. “You love this… dragon, and you love a man. You would rather make nice than avenge the people who’ve fallen to these beasts and their mindlessness. And to crave a man over a woman?” Disappointment drips from his mouth like poison. “What I wouldn’t have given to be blessed with a son worth having.”

Lanced by bitter, endless pain, Jack can only nod against the emotional onslaught. He picks up his bag off the floor—when had he dropped it?—and leaves the house at a run, uncaring as he leaves the front door wide open behind him. His boots crunch over the packed snow of the village square, his breath coming in painful gasps that cloud the frosty air, but he doesn’t slow until Mark’s house is in sight.

He pounds up the stairs to the front door and knocks insistently, repeatedly. Footsteps sound from inside, heeled boots on hardwood, and then Mark’s mother is opening the door with a smile on her face. It quickly falls at the sight of him, and she takes in Jack’s entirety—he can’t imagine what he looks like at the moment—in a single glance and turns to call into the house, “Mark, someone is here for you.”

Jack waits on the step while Mark comes to the door, but what he sees stops his heart dead in his chest. Closely following behind Mark, her fingers woven into his, is a young woman—Jack recognizes her as Olivia, Felda’s daughter. When Mark sees him his eyes blow wide and he hastens to untangle his hand but Jack is already turning away, tears clogging his view as he runs blindly towards the village gate.

“Jack!” Mark yells hoarsely behind him. He hears footfalls but his best friend has never been fast enough to catch him unless Jack let him, and he’s proven right when he makes it to the gate and past without interference. 

“Wait, Jack!” Mark calls again, and Jack would say he sounds desperate, if it were possible. “Jack, wait! Please! Stop!”

He doesn’t stop. He runs the length of the valley path all the way up to their meeting place, the boulder at the path’s apex. There Jack pauses, his breaths heaving, his face chilled from his tears drying in the cold. Inching forward he presses his palm to the unforgiving stone for one unbelievably short moment that seems to last a lifetime, but then he hears Mark coming up the path and he bolts past their rock and into the darkness of the forest.

Mark’s next shout is a sob, so close behind him that Jack can almost imagine his touch. “Jack, please! It’s not what you think!”

“What’s to think about?” Jack calls back. His feet are unsteady in the shadowed murk between the trees but he doesn’t slow down. “You found yourself a wife, Mark. Good for you!” He chokes on the words as he says them, but he says them genuinely. Good for Mark, knowing when to get out. Jack isn’t going anywhere with his life, not now that he's the disowned son of a chief. 

He trips on his next leap, the toe of his boot catching something on the ground and he goes sprawling into the undergrowth. The smell of snow and forest debris is pungent under his face, the mushy consistency under his hands an old, well-worn memory, and laboriously Jack gets to his feet, sniffling, but not from the cold. 

A warm hand clamps onto his arm and through the dark Jack can make out Mark’s features, woebegone as they are. They’re close enough that their breaths mingle in puffs of moisture and Jack backs up, jerking his arm from Mark’s grip.

“She’s not what I want,” his best friend says, gentler than Jack’s ever heard him. “My parents foisted her onto me tonight, hoping I would take the bait. She’s been on me like a lamprey since I got home. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have suction marks.”

“Convenient,” Jack says hollowly, “that she’s only there the one night I show up.”

“It _was_ just tonight,” Mark says urgently, reaching forward to brush his fingers against Jack’s shoulder and because he’s weak, Jack lets him. “I promise. She’s never been over before. Not once.”

“Whatever happened to “I’ll never let my parents make that choice for me”?” Jack demands. His voice is raw with emotion, audible proof of his wretched night. “A-all of a sudden you just let them throw a woman at you, because it’s—what? It’s easier than fightin’ them?” _Easier than fighting for me?_ He laughs humourlessly, sniffling. “What would’ve h-happened if I hadn’t come? Would you have bedded her, too, just for the sake of good manners?”

“Of course not,” Mark sighs. His hands run up Jack’s arms, tugging him ever so gently closer, a whisper of a suggestion but not an order. Only a request, but Jack leans into his embrace regardless. “It’s been you and me forever, Jack. Us against everyone else, against the universe. Don’t you think I’d have left by now if you weren’t the one for me? Don’t you think you know me better than that?”

He does. Better than anyone, he knows Mark and all his quirks, all his flaws and his temperaments, and the man he grew up with just isn’t capable of inflicting that kind of pain on anyone, never mind his truest friend. With a weary sigh Jack lets his forehead drop to rest on Mark’s shoulder. “I’ll maintain that my reaction was appropriate, considerin’ what I walked in on.”

“I agree,” Mark says softly, arms coming around Jack’s back to hold him close. “But I’m glad you let me explain. I’m sorry, for the situation, and my parents, and my handling of it all.”

“You’re forgiven,” Jack mumbles into his shirt, then pauses. Abruptly he pulls back, studying Mark in earnest, his bare arms and thin clothes. “Oh my gods, you’re not wearin’ a coat! It’s the middle of winter, you lunatic, why—”

“I was losing my love,” Mark replies easily, pulling him in again and pressing a kiss to his hair. “There wasn’t time to grab a coat.”

“You…” Jack starts, mildly outraged that Mark would chase him into freezing weather without hardly anything on. “You’re an actual crazy person, you know that?”

Mark shrugs as if he couldn’t be bothered, but Jack feels his smile against his forehead. “Crazy enough, I suppose.”

“Come on,” Jack says, sighing. “Let’s go get your coat.”

They traipse through the woods hand in hand, and despite offering at least four times Mark refuses to take his coat. Jack lets go when they reach the village gate but Mark holds him fast, smiling at Jack’s embarrassed flush. “I’m done playing games with my life,” Mark tells him, sombre and sincere, and tugs him along to continue walking. “I want you, no one else, and I want everyone here to know it.”

“You’ll be askin’ for ridicule of every sort,” Jack warns him, but he’s beatifically pleased by Mark’s declaration, and he knows Mark knows it. “The kind that gets you treated like a walkin’ disease.”

“I don’t hear anyone’s opinion but yours,” is all Mark says to that, smiling. 

At his house Mark walks in without so much as a ‘hello’ and starts grabbing his outdoor things, his bag and hunting gear that all sit by the door. Olivia comes to his side and gives Jack a look doused in loathing before purring, “I thought you’d never come back.”

Mark smiles at her kindly, but that’s all it is. He eases her back with a blatant, distancing hand on her shoulder and the shock on her face is like a bonfire, blazing with temper, lit for all to see. “Olivia, it was nice seeing you,” he says politely, slipping on his coat. Jack smothers his grin with his hand, disguising it as a cough, but when he sees Mark’s mouth twitch he knows that his friend saw. “Enjoy your evening with my parents.”

With the door shut firmly behind them, Jack’s smile breaks free. “I bet you enjoyed that. Admit it.”

“It was extremely gratifying,” Mark permits, grinning. 

By default their feet aim for the gate that leads up to their meeting spot, up to the forest and Wiishu, and abruptly Jack is reminded of why he went to Mark’s in such a hurry in the first place. Mark sees the change in him at once and pauses his stride, taking Jack by the arm and looking into his eyes. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“I…” Jack shakes his head, glancing around them as emotions claw at his insides before nodding towards the forest. “Let’s go find Wiishu. I’ll tell you there.”

It looks like it kills Mark to do so, but he nods and lets Jack go. Their pace is brisk as they scale the path, triply due to the lower temperature, the insistent nature of Jack’s news and Mark’s impatience to hear it. 

At night the forest is quiet, although the occasional hoot of a snowy owl can be heard from the darkness. The snow underfoot scrunches, breaking the quiet with every step, but still neither of them speak. Jack doesn’t dare try to retell his evening before reaching somewhere safe, and Mark is no doubt following Jack’s lead in lieu of knowing what it is that Jack needs. 

They find the clearing easily enough, even in the dark, thanks to Mark’s navigational skills. It’s empty of beast and man when they arrive and instantly Jack raises his fingers to his lips and whistles piercingly. The men wait, and soon the sounds of rapid wingbeats can be heard over the stillness of the winter air.

But as Wiishu makes her approach Mark and Jack are left in awe. Her outline is notable in the dark, not because of her colouring against the pitch of the sky, but because she _glows_. Bioluminescent patterns, striations and designs litter down her body, following the curves and bends of her slender form. They curl along her limbs in lazy swirls and stripe her neck with narrow lines. Her frills and tendrils all glow, less potent than the markings but brightly enough to give off a soft shine. Pinpoint dots scatter over her body en masse, painting a sky’s canvas across her wingspan. The markings glow a soft blue, so unlike her regular colours in their vibrancy but equally as captivating, and when she alights to the ground and gazes down at them, her orange eyes seem to glow even brighter than her body. 

Jack goes to her, arms outstretched. She hums pleasantly when he reaches her, tipping her head down to touch her nose to his brow. But right away she rears back again, patterns distorting as she cranes her head to peer down at Jack intently.

“Yes, somethin’s wrong,” Jack murmurs in defeat, and Mark comes to his side at once. “It’s my dad. He…” Jack exhales roughly, mouth prim as he holds back the tears that threaten to break free. “He disowned me, I guess. He knew I wasn’t trainin’ and he confronted me, and… and then he told me to get out.”

“He _what_?” Mark exclaims hotly. Beside him Wiishu lets out a blazing snort, white fire flaring from her nostrils and a wave of heat flooding them before the cold swallows them back up. “What in the hell—Just because you didn’t train?”

“Well,” Jack says throatily, “after he told me to get out I then tried to convince him about the dragons, and you.” He’s aiming for wry but his voice cracks from emotion, and he stops bothering to hold back. He looks at Mark, whose expression is gobsmacked, and shrugs, the action limp with defeat. “I used the L word and everythin’, and all he did was tell me he wished for a better son.”

Mark brings him into a crushing hug, shaking his head and muttering angry death threats into the collar of Jack’s coat. Jack can’t stop the few sobs that shake him, and he soaks up Mark’s loving embrace like a sponge. Beside him he feels Wiishu extend a shining wing to envelop the two of them, and the effect of the bioluminescence is even more beautiful up close. Jack starts counting dots over Mark’s shoulder, trying to map out familiar constellations in the nonsensical pattern of glowing spots as he breathes unevenly. 

“We don’t need him,” Mark says suddenly, his head lifting. He gazes down at Jack intensely, eyes blazing with fury and indignation on his behalf. “We don’t need any of them. They can fucking rot. We’ve got each other.” He looks up to Wiishu, who croons softly and tips her snout down to nuzzle against both of them. “We all have each other. We don’t need any of those backwards idiots.”

“So, what?” Jack laughs, sniffling. “We’re just goin’ to live with dragons now?”

Mark beams at him, his face glowing pale blue from Wiishu’s markings. “Exactly.” He looks up to the dragon again, whose frills are perked along with all her feathers. “Would you take us to your home?”

Wiishu croons again, an oddly melancholy sound, before she crouches low to the ground and extends her wings. Orange eyes gleam in the darkness, and Jack sighs even as he climbs up onto her back. “This is madness, Mark.”

“No madder than what goes on down there,” the slayer snorts, waving a hand towards the village in the valley below. “At least this way we have interesting neighbours.”

Jack’s chuckle is wet and forced, but when Mark climbs up behind him and sits at his back the comfort Jack feels at his touch is undeniable. Wiishu’s wings spread and she takes flight with a leap and a downward beat, pushing hard to ascend over the trees. Once clear of the forest she veers to the south, undoubtedly pointing them towards the rough seas, and beyond that to the dragons’ island—the nest of all nests. 

_What are we getting into?_ Jack wonders, trepidation and curiosity claiming him in equal halves, but he doesn’t say it out loud. He grips Mark’s hands tight in his and feels Wiishu’s steady wingbeats under him, and he faces his new future with a leaden heart.

*

The flight takes most of the night, and the only thing that keeps them from freezing solid on Wiishu’s back is her constant supply of heat. She breathes hot air over them to stay the cold all through the flight, surely no easy task, but despite her generous and warm ministrations the men are still relieved to see solid ground again. 

The sun is just peeking over the watery horizon by the time their boots hit dirt. Wiishu has put them on a cliff outcropping on the eastern side of the island, some two hundred feet up off the ground and well inland. 

“Remind me never to do that again in winter,” Mark groans, stretching his back with a grunt. “I think my innards have frozen, and then perhaps shattered.”

Jack jogs in place to warm himself, rubbing his icicle-like fingers over his arms in an effort to get some body heat back. Soon enough he feels less like a popsicle and more like a man, and by the look on Mark’s face he’s similarly improved. 

Their dragon companion is nowhere to be found, though, when Jack looks around for her. “Where’s Wiishu?” he wonders. 

The slayer lifts his head, glancing behind them and then northward. “Maybe she’s flown off somewhere,” Mark suggests, but he doesn’t sound very convinced. 

“Let’s walk a ways, see if we can find her,” Jack suggests, moving along the cliff towards the north. They follow the cliff north until they meet with a small cave opening, just large enough for a dragon Wiishu’s size. Something uneasy tickles at the back of Jack’s mind as he peers inside, but he points to the cave and says, “Maybe in here.”

Mark shrugs and they go inside. Past the slim but growing light of day the cave is in complete darkness, but within the gloom Jack can see glowing blue points of light, strangely motionless, at the end of its path. 

“Wiishu?” Mark calls, apparently having seen her too. They’re met with a lamenting cry, sadness overflowing from the short noise, and both men are rushing through the dark, stumbling over rocks and nearly tripping in their haste to reach the dragon.

Once they reach her Jack is knelt at her side, hands roaming her glowing, scaled hide for signs of injury. “Are you alright? Wiishu? What’s wrong?” Jack makes a frustrated noise in his throat, muttering, “I can’t see anythin’ in this dark. Have you got a torch, Mark?”

“Yeah,” Mark replies, and Jack hears the rustle of his friend’s bag before the sound of a flint and tinder striking fills the cave, echoing off the rounded walls and harmonizing the sound with itself. After a few tries Mark gets the torch to catch, and then their surroundings are blessedly revealed.

Jack is searching over Wiishu’s body with a fine-tooth comb in the newly made light, eyes sharp for any damage, when Mark croaks in a wounded tone, “Jack.” 

It’s enough to give Jack pause, and right away he’s getting to his feet to come to Mark’s side. “What is i—” he starts, but then he moves around Wiishu’s prone, curled body and his chest seizes.

Behind her in a cradle of soft leaves, feathers and twigs sit four broken dragon eggs. Like Wiishu, their outer shell is comprised of pale yellows, pinks and blues, all speckled with white. Their fragile casings have been broken not by a man—no man could find this island without a dragon—but by a fellow beast, and it doesn’t take a genius to guess why she came looking for a friend as far away as Norne. 

“Wiishu,” Jack whispers, pained. He bends and lays an unsteady hand on her trembling neck. “I’m so sorry.” At his side Mark’s face is tormented as he kneels, offering his condolences with a touch against her shoulder. “If… if we knew, we never would have asked you to come back here.”

“It’s why she didn’t fear us,” Mark murmurs hoarsely. “She’d never before seen men. The only thing she had to fear were her own kind.”

With a sad wail Wiishu lifts her snout to nose at one of the shattered eggs, and her misery only seems to worsen when it gets her no response. Jack shares a look with Mark in the torchlight, and together they worm their way around Wiishu’s tail to her front, closest to the nest. Carefully the two men ease themselves between Wiishu and the nest, blocking it from view and putting their hands on her shaking body. 

“I’m sorry,” Jack murmurs, sympathetic and worn. “I’m so sorry, Wiishu.”

The dragon wails again, softer than before, and buries her nose in Jack’s chest. Instantly he wraps his arms around her snout in a hug, holding his cheek to her brow and whispering condolences over and over. At her belly Mark strokes a tender, wandering path along her side with the flat of his hand, and slowly Wiishu’s trembling wears down into nothing but the occasional shiver. It’s another minute of cuddling before Wiishu tries getting to her feet and she meets with severe difficulty, weighed down by grief like thousands of pounds on her shoulders. She’s staggering and weak, and Mark and Jack help guide her from the cave without looking back at the broken nest. 

Out in the dawning sunshine her glowing markings fade completely and she stretches her head high above them, wings fanning out as if to soak up every last ray of sunlight. After over a minute she lowers her head again, looking first at Jack and then Mark, bugling gently and nudging the men with her nose.

Neither of them speak and the three stay like that until Mark’s stomach growls loudly, insistent for food. Jack lets out a watery chuckle and Wiishu lifts her head and peers down at them, eyes bright, then herds them both back towards the southern part of the cliff. 

She flies them down to the shoreline far below the cliff where she dives for fish in the deeper water far from the shore. She catches far too many for them to eat but Mark sets up a fire with her help and they cook them all anyway. Whatever they don’t finish they toss for Wiishu, who’s more than happy to snap up their leftovers.

After they eat breakfast they decide to relocate for Wiishu’s peace of mind, flying south for a half hour until they find a suitable cliff wide enough to land on. Jack is just helping Mark down off her back when he hears the unmistakeable sound of a dragon’s growl behind him, claws scraping wickedly against the rock under its paws. Mark’s bow is already off his back and he’s nocking an arrow at the same moment Jack fumbles for the dagger in his boot, but Wiishu beats them to it. As soon as Mark is clear of her she’s leaping forward the necessary few metres to get between the newcomer dragon—a Night Fury, Jack notes with rising concern—and her humans. 

The Night Fury opens its wide jaws and hisses, retractable teeth dropping from its gums and reinforcing the efficacy of its reputation. Its green eyes are fully slitted, pupils narrow and short black snout curled with menace. Back arching like a wildcat, wings high and spread, the Night Fury doesn’t give them a chance to decide what to do and strikes, bounding forward at Mark with a growl, its claws gnarled for impact. 

Wiishu is larger than the Night Fury but not by much, and she throws her shoulder into the Night Fury before it can reach its target, unbalancing it and sending it skidding across the rock. Mark rolls back and away from the hit, bow in hand when he pops back up and aimed with an arrow nocked. Jack can only stand by and watch, hope that it doesn’t come for the weakest-looking of the three of them—but at the same time hoping it does, to spare his only two friends any pain. 

Wiishu snarls, maw gaping wide to show her slender, deadly fangs, and plants herself firmly in front of Jack. Mark glances at her before circling away from her, steps even and steady, his bow pointed at the Night Fury.

_They’re going to fight together,_ Jack realizes, and feels an odd pride swelling inside him. The dragon and her slayer back the Night Fury against the rock wall of the cliff above, boxing it in until it’s snarling and hissing defensively, swatting in short pounces before instantly redacting its position back to the corner. Whenever it tries to swipe with its tail Wiishu paws it away or snaps at it with her jaws, always coming just shy of making contact with the faster, nimbler Night Fury. 

Mark is drawing back his bowstring, aimed at the cornered dragon’s neck, and Wiishu’s body is wriggling as if to pounce, and the word is out of Jack’s mouth before he can think better of it.

“ _Stop!_ ”

Wiishu’s head snaps around and Mark turns to him in surprise, but the slayer doesn’t let up the tension on his bow. “Stop what, Jack? It was going to attack us.”

“It _was_ ,” Jack says, nodding, slowly coming forward to stand at their sides, bending to sheath his dagger back in his boot. “And we stopped it, and now we can scare it off.”

“Scare it off,” Mark scoffs dismissively, and Wiishu snorts agreeably. “Scare off a Night Fury? Are you insane?”

“They’re lone wolves,” Jack says quickly, halfway to pleading as he studies the way the Night Fury helplessly shakes from rage and fear alike, eyes flitting back and forth between the humans. “They don’t keep in packs. This one can’t hurt us now and it knows it.”

Mark lets out a hard breath, glancing from the black dragon to his friend. “It might not come back alone,” he says truthfully, sombrely. 

“It might just go on its merry way, too,” Jack insists, swallowing the lump in his throat. He looks imploringly at Mark, eyes begging. “Please, Mark. We left Norne to put the fightin’ behind us.” He turns and faces the Daybreaker, pressing a hand to her side as she quietly hisses at her prey. “Wiishu. Please.”

For a troubled moment Jack thinks they won’t listen, but then Mark’s lowering his arms with a sigh, putting the arrow back in the slim quiver across his back. He nudges an elbow into Wiishu’s side and with another snort the dragon’s posture relaxes, although her eyes don’t leave the Night Fury for an instant.

“Thank you,” Jack tells them gratefully, smiling. He turns to the Night Fury and crouches down, kneeling on the cold stone. It regards him with searing, baleful eyes, snarling when he holds out his hand towards it, palm out. “You can leave. It’s okay. We won’t hurt you.”

The Night Fury’s head tilts, jaws shutting slowly as it waits. Seeing that none of them intend to attack it, the black dragon inches its way around Mark and to the drop-off of the cliff they’re standing on. None of them pursue it, and with a final glance over its shoulder the Night Fury leaps off the cliff and quickly soars from view around the cliffside with a parting cry. 

As Mark slings his bow back over his shoulder he eyes the smaller man at his side. “I know you mean well,” he sighs, “but we won’t be able to do that with every dragon we come across. We just can’t.”

Sudden irritation bursts through him at Mark's defeatist attitude. “Oh, we won’t? How do you know?” Jack demands, indignantly shaking off Mark’s hand when he reaches out and touches his shoulder. “No, how do you know, Mark? Because you’re the dragon guru? Because—because you’ve killed enough of them to make it easy for you? It’s not _right_ , Mark, none of it, and I won’t be responsible for the deaths of any livin’ creature on this island.”

Jack sighs angrily, huffily as he finishes his tirade, but already he feels regret seeping through him at the hurt look on Mark’s face. Salty winds buffet their hair and clothes in a sudden gust, and uneasily he steps forward but Mark matches it with a backwards one, keeping space between them.

“I didn’t… Listen, I didn’t mean that,” Jack says nervously. He approaches again and again Mark steps away, shaking his head. “Mark, please, I’m sorry—”

“I know,” Mark says quietly, eyes down and his voice strained, “because it’s the nature of everything. Not all things are tolerant and kind. Not all people. Not all dragons. It’s not the way nature works. There’s balance, there has to be, and that means the good equals the bad.” He sighs, glancing up and meeting Jack’s eyes before looking out to the sea. “Sometimes you just have to flee or fight a situation, and there is no other way.”

“You’re right,” Jack murmurs after a beat, staying where he is. He doesn’t think he can be rejected a third time, all because of his rude mouth and his idealistic notions that everyone can be good, that the world doesn’t have to have conflict—even as he causes some. “You’re right. It’s foolish to think that I can get through life without discourse. It’s how the world works.”

Mark lets out a breath, drawn out and weary, and it plumes into the cold air before dissipating. “It’s admirable that you want to try but it won’t happen the way you expect it to, and hoping otherwise will just give you heartache.”

“I know,” Jack says softly. He peeks up at Mark, but the brunet’s gaze is still out at sea. “I’m sorry for what I said. It was uncalled for, and untrue.” He rubs his hands together against the chill in the air, sighing. “It’s not an excuse, but I think it goes without sayin’ that the three of us are pretty stressed.”

Mark’s mouth quirks up at one corner and hope flits inside Jack’s chest like a darting sparrow. “You’re not wrong,” he allows, half-smiling. 

Tentative, Jack comes to his side and warmth blooms in him when Mark doesn’t move away. The feeling bursts into fireworks as Mark lifts his arm to rest around his shoulders, tugging Jack close to his body. Mark turns and presses a kiss to his temple and Jack smiles, tucking his face into Mark’s furred coat collar. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles again into the fur. “I mean it, I didn’t—”

“It’s alright,” Mark says, his left hand rubbing his back in slow circles. “I know. I already forgive you.”

Jack lets out his nervous breath, nodding once before moving into Mark’s arms completely. At once the slayer brings him in close and kisses his brow, their cold fingers tangling together, and nearby Wiishu offers a charming bugle to the morning sun.

*

Their first night is a trying one and they have to move into a short, meandering cave when the wind starts to pick up outside. It’s none too soon, too, because not an hour later the wind outside has become an all-out winter storm, howling gales, crashing waves and heavy snowfall all contributing to the trio’s fouling tempers. 

They’re huddled against Wiishu’s belly for warmth, quite a reliable source of it. Her body glows in the cave’s utter darkness, the markings acting as a nightlight to chase away the gloom along with the cold. When they finally sleep it’s restless, and in the morning Jack wakes first. Outside the storm still rages but at least there’s some daylight peering through the clouds now as the sun steadily lifts behind them. 

He pokes his head out of the cave for only a moment before instantly coming back inside, the snow and wind creating an irritatingly painful combination of harsh ice pellets that pepper his face and make him lift his hand to stave off the blizzard. Jack’s already turning his back to the cave opening, perfectly amiable to the idea of snuggling up to Wiishu and Mark for another hour of sleep, but a screeching cry from outside makes him pause. 

_Is something out there?_ he wonders, advancing to the cave opening again and trying to see some shape, any shape amidst the white catastrophe. He looks and looks, unfocuses his eyes and squints, all the while keeping his ears keen for another sound.

It takes several minutes but he hears it again, a wail of aggravation, distinctly dragon-like and somewhere out in the storm. Shielding his face with his arm Jack walks out into the blizzard and hollers into the wind, “Hey! Is anyone there?”

He doesn’t know if he can be heard over the storm, whether the stranded dragon can even understand him, but a moment later there’s a squawk from somewhere below him. Uneasily Jack gets on his hands and knees and crawls to the cliff edge, careful to be wary of the wind’s direction, and peers over the ledge. 

Below him, clinging on a small outcropping of rock in the cliffside, is a Night Fury, its stark blackness a beacon in the middle of the storm. With every gusty, cold breath that the sky unleashes its wings unfurl from its back, snagged by the wind and dragging it a few feet away from its perch. But the Night Fury hangs on, claws dug hard into the rock as it struggles to fold its wings again with the wind whipping them about. 

“Hey!” he calls, and the Night Fury’s head snaps up. It sees him and cries out in despair as it’s buffeted again as soon as its wings collapse, tossed into the cliffside. He cups his hands around his mouth and yells down, “Can you get up here?”

The Night Fury yowls, staring up at him through the storm until it slowly begins a laborious climb up the cliff. “Yeah, come on!” Jack encourages, reaching down over the edge, as if his assistance would make the critical difference between its success and failure. Claws scraping, paws scrabbling, its progress is slow with the gales that try to dislodge it like a bug swatted from a wall. Jack knows his extremities are losing feeling far too quickly, pressed against frozen rock as he is but he doesn’t move from his spot, instead waiting through the lengthy process and grabbing onto the scaly forepaw of the Night Fury when it comes within reach. Planting his boots against a rock face jutting up from the cliff, Jack heaves and pulls and with an almighty roar the Night Fury launches itself the last few feet, up and over the ledge and instantly bolting for the cave. Jack follows at a hobble, cradling his frigid hands to his chest. 

Inside the Night Fury is moving deeper into the cave, and when it comes upon Wiishu and Mark it stops short, head tendrils flaring with curiosity and then suspicion. It whirls on Jack as he comes up alongside it but Jack is far too cold to consider the threat, shivering hard enough that his teeth clack with each breath. 

The commotion of their entry seems to have woken Mark, and Wiishu in turn. With a stretch and a yawn Mark blinks his eyes open, then lets out a yell when the first thing he lays eyes on is the Night Fury. He scrambles to his feet, looking around for something—no doubt his bow—then his eyes find Jack. Mark rushes to him and embraces him, then immediately pulls back in shock and exclaims, “Jack, you’re frozen! What in the—Why would you go outside in this weather?”

“H-he n-n-needed h-help-p,” Jack chatters, and Mark guides him to Wiishu’s side where she curls a wing around him and fits him snugly to her body. The difference in temperature is heavenly and Jack snuggles into her, hungrily seeking her warmth.

Mark looks over his shoulder at the lingering dragon, keeping well to itself with a wary gaze on the three of them. “I think that’s the one from yesterday. Its face is… familiar, I guess.”

“P-p-plus it doesn’t s-seem to be surp-prised to s-s-see us,” Jack adds. The dragon looks at him then, short tendrils perking slightly as its eyes dilate, and for a brief moment there’s something underneath the hesitation and the caution. Jack hazards a guess and tells it, “You’re w-w-welcome,” and the dragon snorts softly. 

Mark sits with him and rubs his hands to warm them up, idly placing kisses on his fingertips at random intervals. Jack feels giddy at the affectionate gesture and without bothering to second guess himself he slides into Mark’s lap, tucking his chilled face into his neck. 

“M’cold,” he complains, and Mark laughs and flinches when his cold nose touches his skin but he doesn’t push him away.

They doze like that, Mark with his back against Wiishu’s belly and Jack swaddled in his arms, and the Night Fury eventually settles a few metres away, curling up and bedding down on the stone floor with its green eyes, drowsy as they are, on them. It’s hours before the storm lets up in the slightest, and it’s still not a big enough change to warrant going back outside yet. Their stomachs, empty for several hours now, growl with hunger and even Wiishu’s gut rumbles once. She ignites the stone floor in a small circle with her sunfire breath, providing some light and moderate warmth for her human companions.

Some hours later Mark is whittling an old hunk of wood from his bag, propped against Wiishu’s side next to him as Jack draws in his journal by the light of their impromptu bed of sun-like coals. Nearby he can feel the Night Fury watching him and he glances up. Verdant eyes watch him shut the journal, tucking his pencil away with it and putting both in his bag. He doesn’t get up from his spot but he does turn his body to face the dragon.

“You know, it’s warmer over here,” he says, gesturing to their little setup. “More company, too.”

“The best company,” Mark adds, and Jack smiles at him and presses their shoulders together. The slayer smiles back and slices off several small pieces of the wood block, rounding out a sharp edge and saying in a conversational tone, “I’m probably going to be your favourite, though.”

The Night Fury rolls its eyes, and it’s such a human gesture—and rude to boot—that Jack laughs heartily. With a short look the dragon shuffles a few feet closer and then settles again, huffing out a plume of smoke in Mark’s direction.

“You charmer, you,” Mark accuses cheekily, winking, and the Night Fury snorts, parting its jaws and warbling out a long sound that sort of resembles laughter.

The storm lets up slowly, finally giving its last howling hurrah well past the noon hour and it’s an immeasurable relief when they step out of the cramped cave and into the thin sunlight. It’s overcast and still cool, but the wind has all but died and the ocean has calmed its raging waves. 

Their bellies are painfully empty so the day’s unspoken and immediate first task is breakfast. Wiishu takes them down to the shoreline again, but this time they’re shadowed by the Night Fury. It keeps a healthy distance but it stays within sight of them, fishing on its own a little ways down the coast.

Mark and Jack warms themselves by the fire that Wiishu lights for them on some driftwood, and as their first round of fish cooks over the flames the slayer murmurs at his side, eyes to the south, “That Night Fury is still there.”

Glancing up, Jack notes the black dragon’s position as it dives expertly through the waves. “Good,” Jack replies. “I think it would be beneficial for us to have it around.”

“Him,” Mark says, and Jack looks up at him. “The Night Fury is male. I think.”

“You think?” Jack chuckles.

With a small shrug Mark rotates his stick over the fire, roasting the cod on it evenly. “It’s only a guess. Night Furies are hard to classify but this one seems… too brash to be female. It’s mating season, and if he was female he’d likely have eggs to protect. He wouldn’t have been out on his own in the storm.”

“So our Night Fury is a male,” Jack says, sighing before leaning into his friend. Immediately Mark’s arm comes up to wrap around his shoulders and he smiles. “Will he clash with Wiishu, if we try to keep him around?”

“Unlikely,” Mark says. “If they were going to fight they would’ve by now.”

They gorge on fish until all three have their fill, and when they make their way back up to the cave the Night Fury silently follows. He hesitates at the cave opening, though, paws kneading the rock nervously, and Mark turns back to beckon him with a hand and a softly spoken, “Come on.”

The Night Fury enters at a snail’s pace, skulking in with its head ducked low and eyes wide and watchful. They continue on and Jack watches out of the corner of his eye as Mark frequently glances back at their new acquaintance, hiding his smile with his coat collar. When the cave ends and their small, dimly lit camp is before them Wiishu turns and bugles, the sound echoing through the cave, hollowing out and dying away slowly. Her head plumages flares, possibly in greeting or welcome, brilliant feathers puffing up before settling against her scales once more. 

Coming up to them with steady and careful movements the Night Fury chirps back, quiet but assenting, and as they seat themselves around the scorch marks of their previous fire the Night Fury takes a spot there, too. Jack smiles at Mark’s elation when the newcomer sits closest to him, close enough to touch. 

“How’s it feel to be a dragon tamer?” Jack teases, nudging him with his elbow. 

Mark laughs softly, shrugging a shoulder. “I hardly think I qualify at the moment.”

Wiishu dips her head to belch white fire onto the rock again in the same spot as before, igniting the stone with her peculiar breath and giving them ample firelight. Jack smiles at her and rubs his hand along her neck in gratitude. “Oh, I don’t know,” Jack hums, “this guy’s taken to you pretty fast, and that’s after you pointed a weapon at his head.”

With a small wince Mark glances over but the Night Fury seems to be unaffected by the words, instead tilting his head and chirring at Mark, pupils dilating wide. “Well, I guess he doesn’t mind that little hiccup in our relationship.”

“Suppose we should find him a name as well, if he plans to stick around,” Jack says pensively. The black dragon’s tail slaps against the rock floor and he crows once, an affirmative. “Well, have at it, then, Mark.”

“Hmm.” Mark pivots to face the Night Fury, mouth and brow both quirked in thought. “I think you ought to have a fitting name for your personality, and you strike me as a daring sort of fellow.” The Night Fury trills low in his throat, big eyes on Mark. “I wager you’re also stubborn, like someone else I know.” He glances back at Jack with a light smirk.

Jack swats him with a laugh. “Leave me out of this, you.”

“Alright, alright,” Mark relents. To the dragon he says, “What about… Zander?” The Night Fury’s tongue lolls out of his mouth in disgust, nixing that option cleanly. “No? Hm. How about Aegis?” The Night Fury shakes his head side to side definitively. “Maddox?” The dragon continues to shake his head. “Gingham? No, eh? Jago? Balthazar?” 

“Perthys,” Jack offers hesitantly, and both dragon and man turn to him.

“Perthys,” Mark repeats, tasting the word, and turns back to the Night Fury. “What do you think? Perth for short.”

The black dragon warbles delightedly, forepaws bouncing against the cold stone floor. Wiishu sounds her approval, too, bugling softly and tipping her head down to stare keenly at the Night Fury. The dragons hold gazes, Wiishu humming low in her chest, and the Night Fury hums back louder. Both dragons’ tendrils around their faces perk, the Night Fury’s vibrating from his humming and Wiishu’s radiating colours. 

“Perthys it is,” Mark says, grinning, and the Night Fury—Perth—dips his nose down and nudges it once against Mark’s thigh. Tentatively Mark lifts a hand and rests it on Perth’s snout and after an initial flinch the dragon closes his eyes and leans into the touch with a rumbling hum. 

“Wow,” Mark whispers, laughing breathlessly. He glances up at Jack as he brushes his fingers over Perth’s scales and wonders, “Is this what it feels like?”

Jack shrugs, looking up at Wiishu’s face with a smile. She warbles at him quietly and looks back with giant orange eyes, and he says to Mark with a helpless smile, “Yeah, and it just gets better.”

Mark sighs slowly through pursed lips, a sound of awe. “Hard to believe,” he says.

“I know,” Jack murmurs. “All of this is hard to believe.” Melancholy strikes him when he remembers the reason why they fled their home, why it is they’re here at all, and he sags. “What are we goin’ to do, Mark? We can’t avoid our problems like this, not forever.” Mark looks at him, his expression worn, and Jack sighs heavily. “I thought we could. I thought you were right when you said we could just leave and not have to worry about anythin’ again. But I can’t… _we_ can’t run away. Not now.”

“Jack, I don’t know what else we can do,” Mark tells him, morose. “Your father won’t listen to reason. He’s fully intent on wiping out the dragons and unless he changes his mind then the whole village is behind him with that decision. We would need a ridiculous amount of proof that dragons aren’t dangerous, and… after so many years of loss on both sides I don’t know how that’s going to happen.”

“We have to try,” Jack insists. He looks up at Wiishu and puts a hand on her flank, and she blinks down at him with a soft trill. “She trusts us, and we can’t abandon her.” He turns to Perth and the Night Fury stares back, paws shifting against the stone and nudging Mark gently in the leg. “We can’t abandon any of them.”

Mark inhales slowly, looking between the dragons before letting out his breath with a nod. His face splits into a broad grin as he turns back to Jack, and he pats a hand against Perth’s neck when the dragon makes a sound of approval deep in his chest. “So what’s the plan?”

“It’s goin’ to be dangerous,” Jack says, but when he gets to his feet Mark does the same. “And stupid. And reckless. It probably won’t work, actually.”

“Since when,” Mark muses, gathering his bag and bow and slinging them over his shoulder, “have I ever been averse to danger, stupidity or recklessness?” 

Jack laughs, moving forward and insinuating himself into Mark’s arms. The brunet admits him easily, arms coming around his back to bring him close, and Jack rests his head on Mark’s chest. Sobering, he murmurs, “Pa holds a monthly council meetin’ in the grand hall. The next one is tomorrow.”

Mark makes a thoughtful noise, rubbing his shoulder with a wicked smile. “Well, what’s a council meeting without a few dragons?”

When Jack lifts his head he’s smiling, too, and Mark kisses it from his lips. “My thoughts exactly.”

*

While neither of them relish the idea of reliving the flight they endured on the way to the dragons’ island, Mark and Jack know it’s necessary. Thankfully they’re making this trip during the day and so the temperature isn’t as low as their first time, and with two dragons instead of one they can have a mount each and fly faster. Still, it’s hours before the island of Norne is in sight.

“What exactly are we going to say, when we get there?” Mark calls from Perth’s back over the rushing wind.

“I, uh, haven’t gotten than far yet with the plan,” Jack calls back.

“Well you’d better hurry,” Mark replies, and gestures towards their target.

Jack turns to look down at their small village in the valley. Far below them in the centre of town a wooden platform has been built, and on it stands a man who’s unmistakably the chief. He holds a weapon, a broadsword, in his hand and behind him in the centre of the platform is a bound and muzzled dragon, an enormous four-winged Singetail, bright red and large-bodied. Even as they watch the captured dragon attempts to free itself or attack Vallor by spouting fire from its gills but the chains binding it are unaffected and the chief is at the opposite end of the dragon’s body. Vallor’s voice booms through the valley as he addresses the villagers surrounding the stage but they’re too far away to make out the words. 

“What in Odin’s name is he doin’?” Jack exclaims. 

“It looks like an execution,” Mark says worriedly, eyes on the scene below. Perth and Wiishu both rear at that, indignation rampant as they realize the gravity of the situation for their brethren.

“Why would he execute a dragon publicly, like some criminal?” Jack wonders, anger flooding him. “We have to get down there!”

“What are we going to do, Jack?” Mark asks him. “We can’t just charge in on the backs of dragons and convince everyone in a village of dragonslayers not to kill it, and us!”

“That’s exactly what we’re goin’ to do!” Jack snaps, and he points to the congregation below. “Wiishu, let’s go!”

With dual roars Perth and Wiishu dive, wings tucked and noses down. The black dragon, more aerodynamic and significantly faster, pulls ahead by several feet, obtaining a decent lead on Wiishu but even as they gain speed Vallor lifts the sword high above his head with the final words of his tirade. “We’re not going to make it!” Mark shouts, body low on Perth’s back. 

“Faster!” Jack beckons, and Wiishu’s wings beat madly to gain speed as they rocket towards the scene. But it’s still not fast enough, and Jack feels dread cluster around his heart as Vallor swings the sword downward. “No!”

Suddenly Perth lets out a bellowing roar, earth-shattering in its ferocity and indisputably a Night Fury’s cry. They’re close enough that the villagers can hear, and the sound stops Vallor’s swing midway as his and every other villager’s face turns to the sky, one of them crying out at the sight of them, “Night Fury!”

In seconds the two dragons are upon the screaming crowd, swooping out of their dives and instead hovering with rhythmic flaps of their wings until they can drop onto the stage. Around them are the collective shocked cries of the villagers, their stunned faces white as a sheet at the sight of two of their own astride dragons. 

Before they can collect themselves Jack jumps down from Wiishu’s back and runs to get between the bound dragon and his father. “Stop this!” he commands, arms high, and he feels more than sees Mark jump from Perth and join his side. “This is insanity, what you’re all doin’!” Jack glances to the Singetail, seeing the unmitigated fear in its eyes, and yells, “This is murder!”

Vallor’s face is shellshocked, but quickly it deforms into rage at the sight of Wiishu and Perth, their backs to each other and keeping wary eyes on the quickly angering crowd around half of the stage. “What are you doing?” his father demands furiously.

On the ground in front of the stage the villagers are getting rowdy, but not just at the sight of tamed dragons. “What’s the meaning of this, Vallor?” shouts Herke, the blacksmith and Jack’s old mentor when he was a teenager. 

“Stay out of it, Herke,” Vallor snaps, eyes on his disowned son. “Jack, you’re crossing a line coming back here.”

“Jack’s dead, is he now, Vallor?” Herke continues hotly, hoisting himself up onto the stage, involved as swiftly as Jack’s sudden confusion. The blond man is shorter than the chief and not nearly as broad, but his words cause Vallor to pause. “Killed by this very dragon, was he? Wasn’t that what you told me? Told all of us?”

Jack feels his face go slack with mortified shock, his hollow gaze on his father. “You told everyone I was dead?” 

“I bent the truth, yes,” Vallor admits without contrition, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Jack wasn’t killed by a dragon. He only died in my eyes, and at the same time proved a very emphatic point.” He turns to the villagers at large and continues, “The dragons are a greater threat than even I realized. Not only do they destroy our bodies, but now it’s become obvious that one of their kind can poison our minds, as well.” He points the tip of the sword’s blade at Wiishu, who curls her upper lip and snarls softly.

“The only poison here is you,” Mark seethes, fists tightly clenched at his sides, and Jack puts a shaking hand on his arm. 

“This unknown dragon has consumed these men,” the chief says, as if Mark hadn’t spoken. “Not their beings but their mentality. Turned them into puppets, to display their supposed innocence when in reality their minds are no longer their own!”

“My mind is as free as it has ever been,” Jack says defiantly, incensed by the ludicrousness of Vallor’s claims. “We are no puppets, only men!” he says to the skeptical villagers. “I am the same man I’ve always been.”

“We both are,” Mark adds, and where Jack’s words did little to sway them, Mark’s seem to at least register with the crowd of people. “These creatures are our friends.”

“Lies and sorcery!” Vallor bellows.

“It is not a lie!” Jack insists, watching with mounting trepidation as the chief’s grip on the sword handle tightens. “She is a Daybreaker, known by our people but believed to be a myth and she has no magic, only the breath of a dragon. She saved me when she could’ve done any number of other things. In mere days we’ve befriended her, and this Night Fury.” He takes a step towards his father, hands up placatingly. Mark grips his shoulder and prevents him from taking more than one step, though, evidently even more wary than him about the weapon. “Pa, please. Dragons are not our enemy. We don’t have to fight them.”

“Am I supposed to just forget about the growing graveyard of our people, razed and slaughtered by these creatures?” Vallor demands. “Every year there are more and more casualties. I refuse to stand by while my people die.”

“This dragon did nothing and you intended to kill it,” Mark growls, stepping forward. “You’re no better than them if you kill without reason. The fighting will never end unless one side yields, and yet you blame them for the war when you go out and actively pursue them!”

“Our youths are taught from the cradle that these creatures are dangerous, and uncaring, and murderous,” Jack says with fire in his tone. “And their youths are taught from the egg to fear us, to avoid us. If we are taught to hate a race from a young age, does that not make us hateful by nature?” He turns to face the people below, meeting eyes with Herke briefly before continuing, “Is this what you want to be remembered as? Hateful people, destroyers? Do you want to be known for wiping out a species so incredible that they spark legends?”

The chief slams the tip of the sword into the wooden floor at their feet, making Mark and Jack both jump back. Behind him Jack hears Wiishu hiss menacingly as Vallor retrieves it. “Enough!” Vallor shouts. “They pose too great a problem to ignore! They outnumber us and outgun us, and I will not let them reduce us to a smudge on the water!” And he turns to the chained dragon and lifts his arm overhead, silver blade shining in the daylight.

“ _No!_ ” Jack cries, and before Mark can hold him back he’s running to get between them. Except this time his father doesn’t stop, doesn’t even slow, and he realizes his mistake at once as the sword comes down swiftly towards him.

A sudden flash of white light blinds them all before the weapon can hit its mark. _Wiishu’s unique fire,_ Jack realizes almost at once, trembling residual terror and relief both swarming him. Cries of pain, dismay and confusion fill the air and from within all of them resounds a manmade roar of fury. Jack feels himself being tugged away by human hands, hears the burst of a dragon’s lightning breath and the almighty rattle of chains being broken, and as the blindness fades they’re buffeted by gusts of wind and he sees the retreating form of the Singetail in the sky overhead, all four wings pumping madly to escape the village.

Vallor screams with rage at the sight and Jack lets out a huge, post-terrified sigh as Mark turns to face him and holds him closely to his chest. “You’re never allowed to do that again,” Mark whispers to him furiously, his whole body shaking as he clings to Jack.

“Okay,” Jack agrees at once. He knows he sounds frightened but he can’t find the strength in himself to care, and he hugs Mark back hard enough to make him gasp. 

Beside them Wiishu and Perth both growl and the men separate to see Vallor pointing his sword at the two remaining dragons. Around the platform the villagers watch, expressions wide with disbelief and morbid curiosity. “What have you done, you monsters?”

“Pot, meet kettle,” Mark mutters, and Jack smiles to himself before his expression flattens again.

“Pa, they won’t hurt you, they just—” he begins, but Vallor swings the sword in a wide arc, coming close enough to the dragons to make both of them recoil and snarl.

“Vallor!” Herke barks, coming forward and grabbing the chief by the wrist. Vallor is strong but the blacksmith is stronger, and he wrenches the sword out of his hand. “Odin’s beard, what’s gotten into you? The boys are themselves, these dragons have naught to do with mind magic. Daybreakers exist and they’ve got no mental powers to speak of. You know that.” Herke’s face hardens when Vallor only glares at him. “Will you not see reason, old friend?”

“There is no reason here,” Vallor snarls, and Herke sighs the sigh of an old soul. 

“Then you leave me no choice,” the blacksmith says. He turns to the villagers, all looking aghast at the scene, at Vallor’s madness, and shouts, “Who sees Vallor unfit to lead our people? Say ‘aye’.”

“Aye,” hollers a vast majority of the crowd, scattered and varying in intensity but not in conviction. Jack swallows as Vallor’s face drops, and it would almost be comical if it weren’t such an unforeseen situation.

“Then you are dethroned, Vallor,” Herke says wearily. “Relinquish power or be banished from this place.”

“I will die before I give up my birthright,” Vallor rebukes venomously, outraged. The villagers’ voices rise to a hum, murmurs of dismay running through their ranks.

“Be careful, my friend,” Herke warns, his voice dangerously low. “That can yet be arranged.” Herke gestures a few of the men up on stage and instructs the four of them, “Take him to the old cellars down by the fishery. Hold him there and watch him until we can arrange for his… departure.” The men comply, using some of the mangled chain to bind his upper body and tugging the ex-chief kicking and screaming off of the platform and away from the town centre. Jack watches them go with thrashing, conflicting emotions, his body torn between chasing after them to defend his father and helping them incarcerate him.

Herke sighs, long and laboured, and then turns to face Jack and Mark and their reptilian friends. “I’ll admit, Jack,” the blacksmith says ruefully, eyeing the dragons with caution and awe, “this one takes the cake.”

Jack laughs, and it’s borderline hysterical from nerves and leftover disbelief. “You’re tellin’ me.”

“What’ll happen now?” Mark wonders. “With Vallor, and the dragons, and—”

“That’s up to the new chief, isn’t it?” Herke muses, looking to Jack. “It’ll take some preparation and some officiating, but the right is yours, Jack, if you want it.”

Jack swallows against the sudden tightness in his throat. It’s something he’s been preparing for his entire life, to eventually be chief. When they left after he was disowned it was taken from him, ripped away with an angry grip. But now it’s being presented to him again on a silver platter, an appetizing life in his hometown, with his partner _and_ dragons. It’s surreal to think he’d ever have the chance to do what he’s been raised for, something he didn’t even want because of the way he would be forced to do it. But now, with his father out of the picture, his decisions his own and his fate open-ended, it offers a newer, happier version of the position.

“I want it,” Jack says to the blacksmith, his throat constricting with nerves. Beside him Mark takes his hand and links their fingers, squeezing hard. Jack squeezes back and says with his head high, “I’ll be chief.”

“Excellent!” booms Herke, moving forward to clap him on the shoulder. He glances down and sees Mark and Jack’s hands, irrefutably joined, and smiles, his bushy blond beard quirking with the motion. “Never-ending surprises with you, boy.” He grabs Jack’s other hand and lifts it high and shouts to the villagers before the stage, “Our future chief, Jack the dragon tamer!”

Jack’s not expecting one single person to applaud, so he feels it’s appropriate when his stomach drops into his boots in shock as the small crowd explodes with cheering. He looks to Herke in disbelief, who only shrugs and grins, and then to Mark, who bends to press a kiss to his brow with smiling lips. 

It won’t happen overnight, the changes that Jack wants to make with his people. Prejudice over centuries won’t be healed in a week, but the enthusiasm from most of the villagers is promising. Hopeful.

“Do you think I can do it?” Jack whispers, only loud enough for Mark to hear. “Do you think I can lead?”

“You, my love, are more than capable of leading a pack of humans,” Mark replies breezily. “You’ve tamed dragons, and a dragonslayer.” He winks and Jack covers his guffaw with his palm. “Our whole lives are ahead of us now, Jack, and the promise of it all is nearly suffocating.”

Wiishu and Perth both crow their approval, the Daybreaker belching white fire into the air in large plumes and her Night Fury companion shooting a bolt of lightning breath in their excitement. Jack inhales deeply, looking down at the villagers with worry, but Mark takes him by the chin and kisses him. Although the applause stutters, faltering at the display—perhaps Jack and Mark’s as well as the dragons’—neither of them part for even a second.

*

The facepaint itches when Erda applies it to his skin two days later, marking him for his arrival into the title of chief. He’s been clothed in a regal-looking coat, adorned with furs and thread sewn into the sleeve cuffs in the shapes of runes. It’s far nicer than he’s used to, far nicer than his father ever dressed him even as the chief’s son, and over the past couple days he’s come to see the full extent of his father’s control over his life, over the entire village.

“Pa, you don’t have to do this,” Jack pleaded with him the night of his departure. His father was below him in the fishery cellar, sitting among barrels of curing cod and looking particularly enraged. “You can stay here with us, it doesn’t have to be this way.”

“I’ve been usurped by my own people,” Vallor seethed, and it sounded more to himself than to Jack. “Mutiny! Dishonour will fall on all your houses, mark my words!”

Jack sighed. “Come on, Pa, I was goin’ to be chief eventually. You can’t stay in power forever.”

“The son I raised was going to be chief,” Vallor agreed, “but sadly he died alongside my power. Now I only see a husk of a man, fooled by dragons and in turn fooling his people with their presence.” He got to his feet and charged to the cellar doors but the men posted there to guard him held him back from Jack, who flinched at his father’s ire. “The son I raised would’ve listened to my council, would’ve done my bidding as any good chief would have!”

Something clicked into place, and Jack’s heart sank. “Be your puppet, you mean. Even past your time you would try to rule, through me?”

“My time ended prematurely,” Vallor snapped, shrugging off the guards and going back to his seat amongst the barrels. “I was to be chief until I saw fit to step down. When I knew you would do what you were told.”

With a tired soul Jack regarded his father. He’d been stripped of his chiefly attire, given only layman’s clothing, and without the added regality of the clothing his lunacy appeared not as leadership but in its true form—madness. “Have you no heart?” Jack asked him, but as his father turned to look at him with furious, vacant eyes, he knew the answer before Vallor spoke.

“I have only the heart of a man undeceived,” the ex-chief spat, and with that he turned his back to the young man.

Jack didn’t stay to see him off. He knew it would happen that night. His father was given food and water, a bow and a fishing rod along with some other supplies, and cast from the island in a rowboat. Vallor was willing to go, Jack knows, but it doesn’t lighten his heavy heart to know that his father would rather attempt to puppeteer him, disown him when he refused, and then desert him than accept him as he is.

“My oh my, what is that long face for, Jack?” Erda wonders, pulling him back to the present as she’s striping his nose with a single stroke of blue paint.

“My father,” Jack murmurs. “Still I can’t believe how he treated me. How he treated us all.”

Erda hums, dipping her bony forefinger into the paint and swirling a complicated design onto Jack’s cheek. “There’s an old saying we have here on Norne. ‘The sweetest reward is a day behind you full of toil.’ Do you know what that means, Jack?”

He nods. “It means that a day’s work is best in hindsight, when completed.”

“Yes,” Erda smiles, “but also this: a day of strife does its most potent work not in that day, but in the days that follow. Happiness is earned, Jack, not bought or won. Sometimes you have to fight for it, work for it before the silver lining comes through, but the happiness does indeed follow the conflict’s end.” She pats her unpainted hand on his chest, turning to the washbasin in the corner of the room—her room, in her house—to rid her other hand of blue. “You have earned the happiness that will follow, Jack. You’ve strived for a good thing for these people, and the dragons in turn. You returned when it might’ve been easier to flee. You withstood your father’s assault. You fought when there was no cheerful end in sight. This next part of your life will be rife with all the rewards it can offer you.”

Jack lets out a gusty sigh, standing when Erda motions for him to follow her. _Maybe Erda’s right,_ Jack thinks as they leave her hut, emptying onto the snowy ground outside. Overhead the sky is clear, the bluest blue, and it reminds him of Wiishu’s scales. _Maybe the end of the darkness has come, and the light can shine through. But if that’s true, then why does my heart heave with each beat?_

She crosses through town with him in tow to the grand hall, stopping outside the doors. She gives him a short hug, something he’s not expecting, and after offering a tender smile she slips into the hall. 

“It’s just a little feast,” Jack tells himself bracingly. "With the whole village." He spends a minute evening out his breath, forcing his heart to steady, and when the music inside begins just like Erda said it would, Jack opens the door and steps into the hall.

At once the villagers are raucously cheering, banging their mugs onto the tables and hollering their joy. Through the crowd Jack sees Mark at the other end of the hall near the head table, Wiishu and Perth alongside him, and some of the fright that's viced around his stomach lessens. 

He takes his place at the head of the hall, exchanging smiles with Mark and feeling warm at the dragons’ short bugles. He’s dwarfed by the large throne-like chair that’s now his to sit in but it feels… okay, to be here. It feels like it’s a big responsibility merely to sit in the chair and the symbolism isn’t lost on him, but along with the fear comes a sense of accomplishment.

_I earned this,_ Jack thinks, and something writhing and ugly in his chest vaporizes into dust.

Erda comes to the front of the hall before his table, followed by Felda and Jasper, and at the herbalist’s beckon the two begin to play. The tune is slow and lilting, reminiscent of times past, times of peace and understanding. Felda trills the notes, drawing out the sounds from her flute and bringing a sense of belonging and freedom into the song. Jack feels himself relaxing, feels the song doing its job and welcoming him to his new position of power, and he doesn’t have to force himself to enjoy the merriment that it evokes.

After the song reaches completion and the two musicians are applauded and have taken their seats, Jack gets to his feet at Erda’s beckon. Herke and Erda both join him at the head table and each take a hand and lift it high. 

“Do any here see that this man is unfit to guide our people?” Herke booms, his voice carrying easily through the hall. Not a soul stirs, everyone’s eyes on the three people at the head of the room. 

“Very well,” Erda says, loud enough that her smaller voice carries. “And are there any here who would speak for this man’s courage and value?”

He’s expecting it, but it still thrills him when Mark instantly gets to his feet and calls, “I will speak for him.”

“Say your piece,” Herke permits with a wave of his large hand. 

“Jack has been my friend all our lives,” Mark begins. “From the very beginning he’s been with me, and I with him. We fought for each other, and with one another, too—” here the hall’s occupants chortle, and Mark continues with a smile, “—but with every progressive step we supported each other. When Jack and I found that first dragon, it wasn’t me who was the brave one. It wasn’t the dragonslayer who had the courage to befriend a beast so ferocious that we lived in fear of them. It was the chief’s son, the man with nothing to his name but a birthright.

“We all saw him that way,” Mark continues, voice rising, “the man with nothing, the man who could do nothing but obey his father. Even I did, because I knew him best, and I knew he had nothing aspired for himself either because he had been taught not to. But that day changed him, made him into a better man right before my eyes. He gained independence in a heartbeat, and courage unfaltering to go with it. Where I was hesitant, he persevered.”

Mark turns to the hall and says, “When things turned for the worse I advised that we abandon this place, and he agreed. We left like that, as quickly as the decision was made, but I knew Jack had qualms about what we were leaving behind. Our disappearance meant the continuation of what happened here, and without our interference it would undoubtedly be the way it always was.

“It was barely two days before Jack told me we had to go back, and I knew he was right. We had no idea what to expect or what we were going to do, but Jack didn’t let that stop us. He led the way into danger for the sake of his people, for the sake of dragons, and I followed.” He turns back to face Jack and smiles broadly. “As I always will.” Jack feels his heart swell with love and he meets Mark’s eyes, where he sees something similar peering back.

“Hear, hear!” thunders one of the men, and then the hall explodes into noise.

After a significantly long time Herke holds up a hand for the hall to quiet, and when it does he says, “Well, that’s one damn good speech.” The villagers laugh and Jack chuckles when the dragons, on either side of Mark at his table, nudge him proudly. “With that, then, I’d say we have our chief.” Herke lifts Jack’s hand high again, as does Erda on his other side, and the blacksmith hollers, “To the chief!”

“To the chief!” the hall echoes, the two dragons crying out as well, and Jack smiles helplessly as acceptance washes over him in waves.

The party afterwards is a disaster, in the way that good parties usually are. The ale flows freely, and Jack has more than his fill of it along with the rest of the village. The novelty of this celebration, however, is its unusual new guests. Wiishu has every woman in the village in a tizzy over her beauty, and it’s not hard to see that the dragon is pleased as punch about the development. Perth stays by Mark’s side for most of the night but he partakes in a keg of ale to himself and gets pretty inebriated, much to the villagers’ delight. 

Jack takes his leave somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, going back to his house alone in the dark. His buzz has worn off, and as he crosses the threshold of his childhood home he feels misery creeping back in over the way things ended with his father.

“Dwelling is bad for the soul,” Mark says behind him, and Jack jumps so high he’s surprised he doesn’t brain himself on the rafters. When he turns around Mark is smiling.

“It’s a hard one to get over,” Jack murmurs, eyes roving over the inside of his home, “the loss and estrangement of a father.”

Mark nods, his expression becoming mournful. “I know. I can’t imagine what it’s like, but I can offer some sage advice, if you’re willing.”

Jack moves to him, so easily, without any conscious thought, and Mark wraps him up in his arms. “I’m always willin’ to hear what you have to say.”

“Your father was not a good chief,” Mark says flatly, and Jack pulls back to look up at him, shocked. “Nor do I think a good man, the way he treated his own flesh and blood. But that doesn’t mean you can’t love him, cherish him for the good things he gave you. Good memories, good thoughts and moments don’t go away when someone becomes a shadow of what they once were, but that doesn’t mean you have to dwell on what’s negative. Acknowledge it for what it is, accept him for what he was, and then move on without his influence. He holds no more space in your life, Jack, but you can still keep the good parts of him in your heart.”

For a long, pensive minute Jack considers never leaving this moment, simply staying in Mark’s arms until the dark consumes him. But he’s right. Jack can’t dwell on the past with his father anymore than the villagers can dwell on their past with the dragons, and to try and hold onto some remnant of his father when the man had so obviously lost his mind in the end is lunacy itself. He looks around at his childhood home, at the axe still laying on the living room floor, untouched since it was thrown there almost a week ago. 

“What I wouldn’t have given for a blissful ending for us all,” Jack murmurs eventually, his ear resting on Mark’s chest. 

“We can only hope that he finds some better fate out in the wide world,” Mark replies. 

Jack looks up at him with a solemn smile, and when Mark looks back his eyes are soulful. “Stay with me tonight,” Jack whispers.

Mark smiles deviously. “Now you’re speaking my language.”

The chief laughs, slugging him in the arm. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“I know,” Mark muses, bending to kiss him with breathless tenderness, “but I thought I’d put the idea out there.”

They settle into Jack’s bed after dressing down for the night, Jack hanging his coat on the chair in his room. As he sits in bed waiting for Mark to unlace his trousers he stares at it, wonders what it will bring him. What it means for his future.

“Heavy thoughts are not allowed in bed,” Mark murmurs, wrapping his arms around Jack’s chest from behind and planting kisses on his shoulder. “There isn’t room for them.”

Jack hums and doesn’t reply, lying down beside Mark when the dragon tamer pulls him down to the pillows. Mark blows out the candle at the bedside, and in the dark it’s easier to voice the thought that’s been running through his mind since he found Wiishu in the forest, or maybe even before then. 

“I love you,” he says to the pitch, and beside him Mark goes still. “I love you so much. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you at my side these past two weeks. I don’t know how I could’ve—”

“Let me just pause you there,” Mark mumbles to his shoulder, snuggling up close along Jack’s back. “Because there isn’t a scenario on this Earth that would deter me from following you, anywhere. Anywhere, Jack.” Jack feels Mark lift up onto his arms and hover over him as he rolls onto his back. “And for the record, I love you, too.”

Blinding joy swarms him and Jack is reaching up automatically, arms linking around Mark’s neck. He lowers all along Jack’s body, warm and comforting, and their mouths meet in the dark, harmony itself. 

“Wiishu and Perth are not going to live in the house, though,” Mark yawns after they separate, evolving into cuddling. Jack chuckles and hums his agreement as he feels the swift embrace of sleep, made sweet by Mark, unequivocally at his side. 

*

When his eyes open from wonderful and erotic dreams, the sun is shining and Mark’s side of the bed is empty. Grumpily Jack sits up, looking around their bedroom. There’s no sign of the man aside from his shirt from the day before, cast onto the floor in their heated passion as they bedded down the previous night. With a grumble Jack yawns and plucks himself from the warm recesses of their bed, dressing in trousers and a long-sleeve shirt before tucking his feet into socks and then boots and padding his way downstairs.

Mark is sitting by the hearth reading, but he looks up with a smile when Jack walks in. “Good morning, lovely.”

“Mornin’,” Jack yawns, coming to him. He promptly pushes the book out of his hands, uncaring as it falls to the floor, and plops down onto his partner’s lap. Petulantly he mutters, “You weren’t in bed when I woke up. I wanted some fun before we had to start the day.”

Mark runs his hands up Jack’s sides, smiling wider. “That can still be arranged.”

Jack smiles back and bends down to kiss him, happy to the tips of his toes. “Good,” he whispers against his lips, smothering his body along Mark’s with a soft sound.

Mark’s hands dip low over his hips, caressing the subtle curves there before reaching back to his butt and squeezing. Jack makes another soft noise, this one much needier, and Mark hums in reply. Between them the chief’s hands make short work of untying Mark’s trousers, fingers eager and precise, and Mark smirks. “Look at you.”

“What?” Jack says defensively, slipping off his own shirt over his head and tossing it aside before doing the same for Mark. “I’m excited. I thought you would be too.”

Mark snorts, helping him with his shirt until it’s following Jack’s to the floor. “I’m excited, alright. It’s been ages since you’ve been this… impatient.”

“Then why don’t you carry me back to bed?” Jack purrs, rubbing against him. It has the desired effect—Mark’s hands become bruising on his hips where they rest, and Jack runs his hands down Mark’s bare chest. “Come on, love, have your filthy way with me.”

“Don’t ask for things you’re not prepared for,” Mark warns, but his smirk hasn’t fallen. 

“Then prepare me,” Jack encourages wickedly, and Mark’s grip tenses again before relaxing. “I’m askin’ for it, Mark. Give it to me.”

Mark lets out a rough sigh before he gets to his feet, setting Jack down onto his own. Deft hands unlace Jack’s trousers and shuck them off his legs along with his socks and boots, Mark’s following right after, and then he’s sliding a hand beneath Jack’s underwear and removing those, too. 

“What about the bed?” Jack asks, and Mark swings him up into his arms without replying. He carries him upstairs, down the short hall and into their room where Mark drops him onto their bed, following him down and kissing his way up Jack’s legs, then his stomach. 

“Every time we do this I think I’ve imagined how beautiful you are,” Mark murmurs to his belly. “But it’s true. You’re just ridiculous.”

“You… you’re ridiculous,” Jack rebuttals, his face flushing with warmth. Mark looks up and gives him a cheeky smile before removing his underwear and reaching under the bed for the jar of oil. He asked for it and he definitely wants it, but whenever Jack sees their jar for… certain activities, he can’t help his excitement. His cock twitches against his stomach and he wriggles slightly as Mark uncorks the jar. 

Mark coats his fingers in the oil and kisses a path down Jack’s stomach again, licking idly at the tip of his cock when he passes it. Jack jerks and laughs, but it quickly becomes a moan when Mark’s hand teases around his hole before a finger pushes in slowly. It’s obvious that he’s intent on being careful and steady, and Jack’s eagerness isn’t having any of that.

“I want it rough,” Jack says through his embarrassment, tentative to ask even after all this time. Mark looks up at him and quirks an eyebrow. “I want you to be rough.”

“Rough, I can do,” Mark allows easily, and pushes in two fingers instead of one. Jack’s head falls back and he moans loudly, legs falling apart as Mark quickly works his fingers into him. “Gods, you’re beautiful.”

Jack opens his mouth to reply but what comes out isn’t a word, because Mark is relentless, brazenly thrusting his hand. His mouth lowers and he swallows Jack’s cock, tongue licking and cheeks hollowing as he draws back, and Jack lets out a shaky breath. 

Fingers clenched in the bedsheets, Jack gets out, “Please, I’m—I need—”

“Already?” Mark asks skeptically, pulling off of him. “I don’t want to hurt you, Jack.”

“Just, use lots,” he says, gesturing to the jar. “I want you so badly, I—”

“Okay,” Mark soothes, shifting on his knees between Jack’s legs. He pulls his fingers free and instead slicks his cock with the oil, setting it aside and wiping his hand mostly clean with the blankets. “You’re sure? I can—”

“No, just do it,” Jack demands, pulling him by the shoulders. “I’ll be okay.”

Mark gives him a dubious look but he lines up his hips and Jack feels an instant of pressure before he slides in easily, sheathing fully inside Jack and making his legs shake fretfully. 

“Gods,” Jack moans, clinging to Mark’s neck. Mark lowers and kisses him, slow and tender, and steadily his hips start to move. It’s not fast enough, though, and Jack is tugging at him immediately to go faster.

“This is not my first time,” Mark laughs, kissing down his neck with the occasional nip of his teeth. Jack groans softly, turns his head to give him room and Mark adds as his hips slightly speed up, “I do know how to make love to you. I’m not sure why you think I need a lesson in it.”

“Because I want you to ruin me,” Jack murmurs, face heating along with the rest of his body. 

Mark’s brows lift but then he grins. “Well, colour me pleased.” And before Jack can demand it again his hips become brutal, pushing into Jack’s body harshly and making his back arch as he cries out in ecstasy. Mark takes his wrists and pins them over his head and Jack takes the hint, looping his legs around Mark’s hips and bringing them flush together.

“Mark—” Jack moans, his back lifting off the bed with every thrust. His thighs tremble from the force of his partner’s movements, his chest heaving shaky breaths and his arms straining against Mark’s grip. “Nnn, Mark, _Mark_ —”

“You said to ruin you,” Mark says, his voice as rough as his grip on Jack’s wrists. “So I’m going to ruin you, love, and then pick up the pieces and put you back together.”

Jack sobs as Mark tilts his hips and strokes into him harder, a blazing speed that makes Jack shudder to think of the discomfort he’s going to be in tomorrow. But the moment holds no pain, only pleasure, and with every passing second it climbs higher. 

Mark bends and bites his shoulder without pausing, a ruthless pressure that only adds to Jack’s mounting orgasm. His moan is lost somewhere in his throat and with a cascading, muted scream Jack is coming onto his stomach, body arched high and bucking madly against Mark as he continues to pound into him. 

“Mark,” Jack sobs, and the brunet grunts before his body jerks, emptying into Jack with a breathless, jittery moan.

Their breaths are harsh and fast, and as Mark leans away and releases his reddened wrists Jack feels the beginning of soreness through the searing pleasure. Still, he wouldn’t have had it any other way. 

“Are we sated now, dear one?” Mark laughs, rolling to his side with a huff, and Jack laughs. 

“Nearly,” Jack says offhandedly, his tone breezy. Mark growls and pins him again, pressing kisses that feel like wet sparks against the raw, sensitive skin of his neck. He chuckles against the onslaught and murmurs, “Yes, of course I am. You know what you do to me.”

“That I do,” Mark replies softly, smiling down at him as he pulls back. “And every day I’m grateful for it.”

Jack smiles at him, his hands already coaxing Mark down for a kiss when he pauses, something niggling the back of his mind. He thinks about it for a moment, runs through his list of daily To Do’s before he realizes what he’s missed in his morning routine. He shoots upright with an exclaimed, “The eggs!”

Mark’s smiles broadens and he pushes Jack back down onto the bed. “Relax. I checked them right after I woke up. Wiishu and her eggs are just fine. She’s still eating like… well, like a dragon, and Perth is looking after her very well. Though I imagine she’ll be quite upset that she wasn’t the first order of your day.”

“Well, on occasion I suppose my partner has to come first,” Jack muses. 

“Just on occasion,” Mark agrees, mouth quirked, and when he lowers to kiss Jack the chief opens his arms without a second thought.


End file.
